A-/-/S' 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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'^X. 



NEW VIEWS 



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CHRISTIANITY, SOCIETY,-:: 



THE CHURCH. 



By O. a. BROWNSON. 



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BOSTON: 

JAMES MUNROE AND COMPANY. 

1836. 



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Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1836, 

By James Munroe and Company, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 



J^^^ 



Cambridge Press : 
Metcalf, Torry, & Ballou. 



MEMBERS AND FRIENDS 



THE SOCIETY FOR CHRISTIAN UNION AND PROGRESS, 



THIS LITTLE 



Volume lu Knscrtiietr, 



AS A TOKEN OF AFFECTION AND ESTEEM, 



BY THE AUTHOR. 



^ 



PREFACE. 



It must not be inferred from my calling this 
little work New Views, that I profess to 
bring forward a new religion, or to have dis- 
covered a new Christianity. The religion of 
the Bible I believe to be given by the inspi- 
ration of God, and the Christianity of Christ 
satisfies my understanding and my heart. 
However widely I may dissent from the 
Christianity of the Church, with that of 
Christ I am content to stand or fall, and I 
ask no higher glory than to live and die in it 
and for it. 

I believe my views are somewhat original, 
but I am far from considering them the only 
or even the most important views which may 
be taken of the subjects on which I treat. 
Those subjects have a variety of aspects, and 
all their aspects are true and valuable. He who 
presents any one of them does a service to 



VI PREFACE. 

Humanity ; and he who presents one of them 
has no occasion to fall out with him who 
presents another^ nor to claim superiority 
over him. 

Although I consider the views contained 
in the following pages original, I believe 
the conclusions, to which I come at last, 
will be found very much in accordance with 
those generally adopted by the denomination 
of Christians, v^^ith whom it has been for 
some years my happiness to be associated. 
That denomination, however, must not be 
held responsible for any of the opinions I 
have advanced. I am not the organ of a 
sect. I do not speak by authority, nor under 
tutelage. I speak for myself and from my 
own convictions. And in this way, better 
than I could in any other, do I prove my 
sympathy with the body of which I am a 
member, and establish my right to be called 
a Unitarian. 

In what I have written here, as w^ell as 
in all I have written elsewhere and on other 
occasions, I have aimed to set an example of 



PREFACE. Vii 

free thought and free speech. I ask no 
thanks for this^ for it was my duty and I 
dared not do otherwise. Besides, Theology 
can never rise to the rank and certainty of a 
science, till it be submitted to the free and 
independent action of the human mind. 

It will at once be seen that I have given 
only a few rough sketches of the subjects I 
have introduced. Many statements appear 
without the qualifications with which they 
exist in my own mind, many parts are doubtless 
obscure for the want of fuller developments^ 
and the whole probably needs to be historic- 
ally verified. But I have done all I could 
without making a larger book, and a larger 
book I could hope that nobody would buy or 
read. I may hereafter fill up my sketches 
and complete my pictures ; but it would have 
been useless in the present state of the pub- 
lic mind to attempt more than I have done. 

For my literary sins I have a right to some 
indulgence. My early life was spent in far 
other pursuits than those of literature. I 
make no pretensions to scholarship. For all 



Vlii PREFACE. 

my other sins — except those of omission, for 
which I have given a valid excuse — I ask no 
indulgence. I hope I shall be rigidly criti- 
cised. He who helps me correct my errors 
is my friend. 

Those who feel any interest in "The 
Society for Christian Union and Progress" — 
a society collected during the past summer, 
and of which I am the minister — may find 
in this volume the principles on which that 
society is founded, and the objects it contem- 
plates. To the members of that society and 
to those who have listened to my preaching 
these views will not be new. 

If any of my readers wish to pursue the 
subject touched upon in my Introduction, I 
would refer them to Benjamin Constant's 
great work " De la Religion consideree dans sa 
Source, ses Formes et ses Developpements;" 
to "Religion and the Church," a book by Dr. 
Follen, which he is now publishing in a series 
of numbers ; and especially to Schleierma- 
cher's work "Ueber die Religion : Reden an 
die Gebildeten unter ihrem Verachtern," or 



PREFACE. IX 

"Discourses on Religion^ addressed to the 
Cultivated among ,its Despisers/' a work 
which produced a powerful sensation in Ger- 
many when it first appeared, and one which 
cannot fail to exert a salutary influence on 
religious inquiry among ourselves. A friend, 
to whom I am proud to acknowledge myself 
under many obligations, has translated this 
work in the course of his own private studies, 
and I cannot but hope that he may be induced 
ere long to publish it. 

With these remarks I commit my little 
work to its fate. It contains results to 
which I have come only by years of painful 
experience ; but I dismiss it from my mind 
with the full conviction, that He, who has 
watched over my life and preserved me 
amidst scenes through which I hope I may 
not be called to pass again, will take care 
that if what it contains be false it shall do 
no harm, and if it be true that it shall not 
die. 

O. A. B. 

Boston, Nov. 8, 1836. 



i^ 



CONTENTS 



Page 
Introduction. 1 

CHAPTER I. 
Christianity. 5 

CHAPTER n. 
The Church 17 

CHAPTER HI. 
Protestantism. ....... 27 

CHAPTER IV. 
Protestantism 38 

CHAPTER V. 
Reaction of Spiritualism. .... 47 

CHAPTER VI. 

Mission of the Present 67 

CHAPTER VII. 
Christian Sects 67 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Indications of the Atonement. ... 82 

CHAPTER IX. 
The Atonement. 96 

CHAPTER X. 
Progress. 105 



INTRODUCTION. 



Religion is natural to man and he ceases to be 
man the moment he ceases to be religious. 

This position is sustained by what we are con- 
scious of in ourselves and by the universal history 
of mankind. 

Man has a capacity for religion, faculties which 
are useless without it, and wants which God alone 
can satisfy. Accordingly wherever he is, in 
whatever age or country, he has — with a few 
individual exceptions easily accounted for — some 
sort of religious notions and some form of religious 
worship. 

But it is only religion, as distinguished from 
religious institutions, that is natural to man. The 
religious sentiment is universal, permanent, and 
indestructible ; religious institutions depend on 
transient causes, and vary in different countries 
and epochs. 

1 



2 INTRODUCTION. 

As distinguished from religious institutions, 
religion is the Conception, or Sentiment, of the 
Holy, that which makes us think of something as 
Reverend, and prompts us to revere it. It is that 
indefinable something within us which gives a 
meaning to the words Venerable and Awful, which 
makes us linger around the Sacred and the Time- 
hallowed, the graves of heroes or of nations, — 
which leads us to launch away upon the boundless 
expanse, or plunge into the mysterious depths of 
Being, and which, from the very ground of our 
nature, like the Seraphim of the prophet, is for- 
ever crying out, '^ Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of 
hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.'' 

Religious institutions are the forms with which 
man clothes his religious sentiment, the answer he 
gives to the question. What is the Holy? Were 
he a stationary being, or could he take in the whole 
of truth at a single glance, the answer once given 
would be always satisfactory, the institution once 
adopted would be universal, unchangeable, and 
eternal. But neither is the fact. Man's starting- 
point is the low valley, but he is continually — with 
slow and toilsome effort it may be — ascending the 
sides of the mountain to more favorable positions, 
from which his eye may sweep a broader horizon 



INTRODUCTION. 3 

of truth. He begins in ignorance, but he is ever 
growing in knowledge. 

In our ignorance, when we have seen but little of 
truth, and seen that little but dimly, we identify 
the Holy with the merely Terrible, the Powerful, 
the Inscrutable, the Useful, or the Beautiful ; and 
we adopt as its symbols, the Thunder and Light- 
ning, Winds and Rain, Ocean and Storm, majestic 
River or placid Lake, shady Grove or winding 
Brook, the Animal, the Bow or Spear by means 
of which we are fed, clothed, and protected ; but 
as Experience rolls back the darkness, which made 
all around us appear huge and spectral, purges 
and extends our vision, these become inadequate 
representatives of our religious ideas ; they fail to 
shadow forth the Holy to our understandings ; and 
we leave them and rise to that which appears to be 
free from their limited and evanescent nature, to 
that which is Unlimited, All-sufficient, and Un- 
failing. 

We are creatures of growth ; it is, therefore, 
impossible that all our institutions should not be 
mutable and transitory. We are forever discover- 
ing new fields of truth, and every new discovery 
requires a new institution, or the modification of an 
old one. We might as well demand that the 



4 INTRODUCTION. 

sciences of physiology, chemistry, and astronomy 
should wear eternally the same form, as that relig- 
ious institutions should be unchangeable, and that 
those which satisfied our fathers should always 
satisfy us. 

All things change their forms. Literature, Art, 
Science, Governments, change under the very eye 
of the spectator. Religious institutions are subject 
to the same universal law. Like the individuals of 
our race, they pass away and leave us to deck their 
tombs, or in our despair, to exclaim that we will 
lie down in the grave with them. But as the race 
itself does not die, as new generations crowd upon 
the departing to supply their places, so does the 
reproductive energy of religion survive all muta- 
tions of forms, and so do new institutions arise to 
gladden us with their youth and freshness, to carry 
us farther onward in our progress, and upward 
nearer to That which ^* is the same yesterday, 
to-day, and forever.'' 



1! 



NEW VIEWS. 



CHAPTER I. 



CHRISTIANITY. 



About two thousand years ago, Mankind, having 
exhausted all their old religious institutions, re- 
ceived from their heavenly Father through the 
ministry of Jesus of Nazareth a new institution 
which was equal to their advanced position, and 
capable of aiding and directing their future pro- 
gress. 

But this institution must be spoken of as one 
which was, not as one which is. Notwithstand- 
ing the vast territories it acquired, the mighty 
influence it once exerted over the destinies of 
humanity, and its promises of immortality, it is 
now but the mere shadow of a sovereign, and its 
empire is falling in ruins. What remains of it is 
1* 



6 CHRISTIANITY. 

only the body after the spirit has left it. It is no 
longer animated by a living soul. The sentiment 
of the Holy has deserted it, and it is a by-word 
and a mockery. 

Either then Jesus did not embrace in his mind 
the whole of truth, or else the Church has at best 
only partially realized his conception. 

No institution, so long as it is in harmony with 
the progress of the understanding, can fail to com- 
mand obedience or kindle enthusiasm. The 
Church now does neither. There is a wdde dis- 
parity between it and the present state of intellec- 
tual development. We have discovered truths 
which it cannot claim as its own ; we are con- 
scious of instincts which it disavows, and which 
we cannot, or will not, suppress. Whose is the 
fault ? Is it the fault of Humanity, of Jesus, or of 
the Church? 

Humanity cannot be blamed, for Humanity's law 
is to grow ; it has an inherent right to seek for 
truth, and it is under no obligation to shut its eyes 
to the facts which unfold themselves to its obser- 
vation. It is not the fault of Jesus, unless it can 
be proved that all he contemplated has been 
realized, that mankind have risen to as pure, and 
as happy a state as he proposed ; have indeed fully 



CHRISTIANITY. 7 

comprehended him, taken in his entire thought, 
and reduced it to practice. Nobody will pretend 
this. The fault then must be borne by the Church. 

The Church even in its best days was far below 
the conception of Jesus. It never comprehended 
him, and was always a very inadequate symbol of 
the Holy as he understood it. 

Christianity, as it existed in the mind of Jesus, 
was the type of the most perfect religious institu- 
tion to which the human race will, probably, ever 
attain. It was the point where the sentiment and 
the institution, the idea and the symbol, the concep- 
tion and its realization appear to meet and become 
one. Bat the contemporaries of Jesus were not 
equal to this profound thought. They could not 
comprehend the God-Man, the deep meaning of 
his assertion, ^' I and my Father are one.'' He 
spake as never man spake — uttered truths for all 
nations, and for all times ; but what he uttered was 
necessarily measured by the capacity of those who 
heard him — not by his own. The less never 
comprehends the greater. Their minds must have 
been equal to his in order to have been able to 
take in the full import of his words. They might 
— as they did — apprehend a great and glorious 
meaning in what he said ; they might kindle at the 



8 CHRISTIANITY. 

truths he revealed to their understandings, and even 
glory in dying at the stake to defend them ; but 
they would invariably and inevitably narrow them 
down to their own inferior intellects, and interpret 
them by their own previous modes of thinking and 
believing. 

The Disciples themselves, the familiar friends, 
the chosen Apostles of Jesus, notwithstanding all 
the advantages of personal intercourse and personal 
explanations, never fully apprehended him. They 
mistook him for the Jewish Messiah, and even 
after his resurrection and ascension, they supposed 
it to have been his mission to *^ restore the kingdom 
to Israel.'' Though commanded to preach the 
Gospel to ^^ every creature," they never once 
imagined that they were to preach it to any people 
but the Jewish, till the circumstances, which pre- 
ceded and followed Peter's visit to Cornelius 
the Roman Centurion, took place to correct their 
error. It was not till then that any one of them 
could say, '^ Of a truth, I perceive that God is 
no respecter of persons ; but in every nation he 
that feareth him and worketh righteousness is 
accepted with him." If this was true of the Dis- 
ciples, how much more true must it have been of 
those who received the words of Jesus at second 



CHRISTIANITY. 9 

or third hand, and without any of the personal 
explanations or commentaries necessary to unfold 
their meaning ? 

Could the age, in which Jesus appeared, have 
comprehended him, it would have been superior to 
him, and consequently have had no need of him. 
We do not seek an instructer for our children in one 
who is not able to teach them. Moreover, if that 
age could have even rightly apprehended Jesus, we 
should be obliged to say his mission was intended to 
be confined to that age, or else to admit that the 
human race was never to go beyond the point then 
attained. Either Jesus did not regard the Future 
of Humanity, or he designed to interrupt its pro- 
gress, and strike it with the curse of immobility ; 
or else he was above his age and of course not to 
be understood by it. The world has not stood stili 
since his coming ; the Church has always consid- 
ered his kingdom as one of which there is to be no 
end ; and we know that he was not comprehended, 
and that even we, with the advantage of nearly two 
thousand years of mental and moral progress, are 
far — very far - — below him. 

If the age in which Jesus appeared could not 
comprehend him, it is obvious that it could not 
fully embody him in its institutions. It could 



10 CHRISTIANITY. 

embodv no more of him than it could receive, and 
as it could receive only a part of him, we must 
admit that the Church has never been more than 
partially Christian. Never has it been the real 
body of Christ. Never has it reflected the God- 
Man perfectly. Never has it been a true mirror of 
the Holy. Always has the Holy in the sense of 
the Church been a very inferior thing to what it 
was in the mind and heart and life of Jesus. 

But we must use measured terms in our condem- 
nation of the Church, We must not ask the man in 
the child. The Church did what it could. It did its 
best to ^' form Christ" within itself, ^' the hope of 
glory," and was up to the period of its downfall as 
truly Christian, as the progress made by the human 
race admitted. It aided the grow^th of the human 
mind ; enabled us to take in more truth than it had 
itself received ; furnished us the light by which 
we discovered its defects ; and by no means should 
its memory be cursed. Nobly and perseveringly 
did it discharge its duty ; useful was it in its day 
and generation ; and now that it has given up the 
ghost, we should pay it the rites of honorable 
burial, plant flowers over its resting place, and 
sometimes repair thither to bedew them with our 
tears. 



CHRISTIANITY. H 

To comprehend Jesus, to seize the Holy as it 
was in him, and consequently the true idea of Chris- 
tianity, we must, from the heights to which we have 
risen by aid of the Church, look back and down 
upon the age in which he came, ascertain what 
was the work which there was for him to perform, 
and from that obtain a key to what he proposed to 
accomplish. 

Two systems then disputed the Empire of the 
World ; Spiritualism * represented by the Eastern 
world, the old world of Asia, and Materialism 
represented by Greece and Rome. Spiritualism 
regards purity or holiness as predicable of Spirit 
alone, and Matter as essentially impure, possessing 
and capable of receiving nothing of the Holy, — 
the prison house of the soul, its only hindrance to 
a union with God, or absorption into his essence, the 
cause of all uncleanness, sin, and evil, consequently 
to be contemned, degraded, and as far as possible 
annihilated. Materialism takes the other extreme, 
does not recognise the claims of Spirit, disregards 

* I use these terms. Spiritualism and Materialism, to desig- 
nate two social, rather than two philosophical systems. They 
designate two orders, which, from time out of mind, hav^e 
been called spiritual and temporal or carnal, holy and pro- 
fane^ heavenly and worldly, &c. 



12 CHRISTIANITY. 

the soul, counts the body everything, earth all, 
heaven nothing, and condenses itself into the ad- 
vice, ^' Eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." 

This opposition between Spiritualism and Mate- 
rialism presupposes a necessary and original 
antithesis between Spirit and Matter. When Spirit 
and Matter are given as antagonist principles, we 
are obliged to admit antagonism between all the 
terms into which they are respectively convertible. 
From Spirit is deduced by natural generation, God, 
the Priesthood, Faith, Heaven, Eternity ; from 
Matter, Man, the State, Reason, the Earth, and 
Time ; consequently to place Spirit and Matter in 
opposition, is to make an antithesis between God 
and Man, the Priesthood and the State, Faith and 
Reason, Heaven and Earth, and Time and Eter- 
nity. 

This antithesis generates perpetual and univer- 
sal war. It is necessary then to remove it and 
harmonize, or unite the two terms. Now, if we 
conceive Jesus as standing between Spirit and 
Matter, the representative of both — God-Man 
— the point where both meet and lose their 
antithesis, laying a hand on each and saying, ^' Be 
one, as I and my Father are one," thus sanctifying 
both and marrying them in a mystic and holy 



1 



CHRISTIANITY. 13 

union, we shall have his secret thought and the 
true Idea of Christianity. 

The Scriptures uniformly present Jesus to us as 
a mediator, the middle term between two extremes, 
and they call his work a mediation, a reconciliation 
— an atonement. The Church has ever considered 
Jesus as making an atonement. It has held on to 
the term at all times as with the grasp of death. 
The first charge it has labored to fix upon heretics 
has been that of rejecting the Atonement, and 
the one all dissenters from the predominant doc- 
trines of the day, have been most solicitous to re- 
pel is that of '' denying the Lord who bought us." 
The whole Christian world, from the days of the 
Apostles up to the moment in which I write, have 
identified Christianity with the Atonement, and felt 
that in admitting the Atonement they admitted 
Christ, and that in denying it they were rejecting 
him. 

Jesus himself always spoke of his doctrine, the 
grand Idea which lay at the bottom of all his teach- 
ing, under the term *' Love." *^A new com- 
mandment give I unto you, that ye love one anoth- 
er." ^' By this shall all men know that ye are my 
disciples, if ye have love one to another." John, 
who seems to have caught more of the peculiar 
2 



14 CHRISTIANITY. 

spirit of Jesus than any of the Disciples, sees noth- 
ing but love in the Gospel. Love penetrated his 
soul ; it runs through all his writings, and tradi- 
tion relates that it at length so completely absorbed 
him that all he could say in his public addresses 
was, '' Little children, love one another." He 
uniformly dwells with unutterable delight on the 
love which the Father has for us and that which we 
may have for him, the intimate union of man with 
God, expressed by the strong language of dwelling 
in God and God dwelling in us. In his view there 
is no antagonism. All antithesis is destroyed. 
Love sheds its hallowed and hallowing light over 
both God and Man, over Spirit and Matter, bind- 
ing all beings and all Being in one strict and ever- 
lasting union. 

The nature of love is to destroy all antagonism. 
It brings together; it begetteth union, and from 
union cometh peace. And what Vv^ord so accu- 
rately expresses to the consciousness of Christen- 
dom, the intended result of the mission of Jesus, 
as that word peace ? Every man who has read 
the New Testament feels that it was peace that 
Jesus came to effect, — peace after which the soul 
has so often sighed and yearned in vain, and a 
peace not merely between two or three individuals 



CHRISTIANITY. 15 

for a day, but a universal and eternal peace between 
all conflicting elements, between God and man, 
between the soul and body, between this world and 
another, between the duties of time and the duties 
of eternity. How clearly is this expressed in that 
sublime chorus of the angels, sung over the man- 
ger-cradle— *^ Glory to God in the highest, on 
earth peace and good-will to men ! ^' 

Where there is but one term there is no union. 
There is no harmony with but one note. It is 
mockery to talk to us of peace where one of the 
two belligerent parties is annihilated. That were 
the peace of the grave, Jesus must then save both 
parties. The Church has, therefore, with a truth 
it has never comprehended, called him God-Man. 
But if the two terms and their products be origin- 
ally and essentially antagonist; if there be between 
them an innate hostility, their union, their recon- 
ciliation cannot be effected. Therefore in proposing 
the union, in attempting the Atonement, Christian- 
ity declares as its great doctrine that there is no 
essential, no original antithesis between God and 
man ; that neither Spirit nor Matter is unholy in 
its nature ; that all things, Spirit, Matter, God, 
Man, Soul, Body, Heaven, Earth, Time, Eternity, 
with all their duties and interests, are in themselves 



16 CHRISTIANITY. 

holy. All things proceed from the same Holy 
Fountain, and no fountain sendeth forth both sweet 
waters and bitter. It therefore writes ^* Holiness 
TO THE Lord" upon every thing, and sums up its 
sublime teaching in that grand synthesis, ** Thou 
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and 
mind and soul and strength, and thy neighbour as 
thyself." 



CHAPTER II. 



THE CHURCH. 



The aim of the Church was to embody the Holy 
as it existed in the mind of Jesus, and had it suc- 
ceeded, it would have realized the Atonement ; 
that is, the reconciliation of Spirit and Matter and 
all their products. 

But the time was not yet. The Paraclete was in 
expectation. The Church could only give currency 
to the fact that it was the mission of Jesus to make 
an atonement. It from the first misapprehended 
the conditions on which it was to be effected. In- 
stead of understanding Jesus to assert the holiness 
of both Spirit and Matter, it understood him to 
admit that Matter was rightfully cursed, and to 
predicate holiness of Spirit alone. In the sense of 
the Church then he did not come to atone Spirit 
and Matter, but to redeem Spirit from the conse- 
quences of its connexion with Matter. His name 
therefore was not the Atoner, the Reconciler, but 
the Redeemer, and his work not properly an 
2# 



18 THE CHURCH. 

atonement, but a redemption. This was the 
original sin of the Church. 

By this misapprehension the Church rejected the 
mediator. The Christ ceases to be the middle 
term uniting Spirit and Matter, the hilasterion, the 
mercy-seat, or point where God and man meet 
and lose their antithesis, the Advocate with the 
Father for Humanity, and becomes the Avenger of 
Spirit, the Manifestation of God's righteous indig- 
nation against Man. He dies to save mankind, it 
is true, but he dies to pay a penalty. God demands 
man's everlasting destruction; Jesus admits that 
God's demand is just, and dies to discharge it. 
Hence the symbol of the cross, signifying to the 
Church an original and necessary antithesis between 
God and man which can be removed only by the 
sacrifice of justice to rnercy. In this the Church 
took its stand with Spiritualism, and from a media- 
tor became a partisan. 

By taking its stand with Spiritualism the Church 
condemned itself to all the evils of being exclusive. 
It obliged itself to reject an important element of 
truth, and it became subject to all the miseries and 
vexations of being intolerant. It became respon- 
sible for all the consequences which necessarily 
result from Spiritualism. The first of these conse- 



n 



THECHURCH. 19 

quences was the denial that Jesus came in the flesh. 
If Matter be essentially unholy, then Jesus, if he 
had a material body, must have been unholy; if un- 
holy, sinful. Hence all the difficulties of the Gnos- 
tics — difficulties hardly adjusted by means of a 
Virgin Mother and the Immaculate Conception ; for 
this mode of accommodation really denied the 
God-Man, the symbol of the great truth the Church 
was to embody. It left the God indeed, but it 
destroyed the Man, inasmuch as it separated the 
humanity of Jesus by its very origin from common 
humanity. 

Man's inherent depravity, his corruption by na- 
ture followed as a matter of course, Man by his 
very nature partakes of Matter, is material, then 
unholy, then sinful, corrupt, depraved. He is 
originally material, therefore orginally a sinner. 
Hence original sin. Sometimes original sin is in- 
deed traced to a primitive disobedience, to the 
Fall ; but then the doctrine of the Fall itself is 
only one of the innumerable forms which is as- 
sumed by the doctrine of the essential impurity of 
Matter. 

From this original, inherent depravity of human 
nature necessarily results that antithesis between 
God and man which renders their union impossible 



.%^ 



20 THE CHURCH. 

and which imperiously demands the sacrifice of 
one or the other. '' Die he or justice must." Man 
is sacrificed on the cross in the person of Jesus. 
Hence the Vicarious Atonement, the conversion of 
the Atonement into an Expiation. But, if man 
was sacrificed, if he died as he deserved in Jesus, 
his death was eternal. Symbolically then he can- 
not rise. The body of Jesus after his resurrection 
is not material in the opinion of the Church. He 
does not rise God-Man, but God. Hence the abso- 
lute Deity of Christ, which under various disguises 
has always been the sense of the Church. 

From man's original and inherent depravity it 
results that he has no power to work out his own 
salvation. Hence the doctrine of Human Inability. 
By nature man is enslaved to Matter ; he is born in 
sin and shapen in iniquity. He is sold to sin, to 
the world, to the devil. He must be ransomed. 
Matter cannot ransom him : then Spirit must, — 
and '^ God the mighty Maker"'' dies to redeem his 
creature^ to deliver the soul from the infiaence of 
Matter. 

But this can be only partially effected in this 
world. As long as we live, we must drag about 
with us this clog of earth — matter — and not till 
after death, when our vile bodies shall be changed 



THECHURCH. 21 

into the likeness of Christ's glorious body, shall we 
be really saved. We are not then saved here ; we 
only hope to be saved hereafter. Hence the doc- 
trine which denies holiness to man in this world, 
which places the kingdom of God exclusively in 
the world to come, and which establishes a real 
antithesis between heaven and earth, and the means 
necessary to secure present well-being and those 
necessary to secure future blessedness. 

God has indeed died to ransom sinners from the 
grave of the body, to redeem them from the flesh, 
to break the chains of the bound and to set the 
captive free ; but the effects of the ransom must be 
secured ; agents must be appointed to proclaim the 
glad tidings of salvation, to bid the prisoner hope, 
and the captive rejoice that the hour of release will 
come. Hence the Church. Hence too the authority 
of the Church to preach salvation — to save sin- 
ners. And as the Church is composed of all who 
have this authority and of none others, therefore 
the dogma, ** Out of the Church there is no salva- 
tion.'' 

The Church is commissioned ; it is God's agent 
in saving sinners. It is then his representative. 
If the representative of God, then of spirit. In its 
representative character, that is, as a Church, it is 



22 THE CHURCH. 

then spiritual, and if spiritual, holy ; and if holy, 
infallible. Hence the Infallibility of the Church. 

The Holy should undoubtedly govern the Un- 
holy ; Spirit then should govern Matter. Spirit 
then is supreme ; and the Church as the represen- 
tative of Spirit must also be supreme. Hence the 
Supremacy of the Church. 

The Church is a vast body composed of many 
members. It needs a head. It should also be 
modelled after the Church above. The Church 
above has a supreme head, Jesus Christ ; the 
Church below should then have a head, who may 
be its centre, its unity, the personification of its 
wisdom and its authority. Hence the Pope, the 
Supreme Head of the Church, Vicar of Jesus, and 
Representative of God. 

The Church is a spiritual body. Its supremacy 
then is a spiritual supremacy. A spiritual su- 
premacy extends to thought and conscience. Hence 
on the one hand the Confessional designed to solve 
cases of conscience, and on the other Creeds, Ex- 
purgatory Indexes, Inquisitions, Pains and Penalties 
against Heretics. 

The spiritual order in heaven is absolute; the 
Church then as the representative of that order 
must also be absolute. As a representative it 



% 



THE CHURCH. 23 

speaks not in its own name, but in the name of the 
power it represents. Since that power may com- 
mand, the Church may command ; and as it may 
command in the nam.e of an absolute sovereign, its 
commands must be implicitly obeyed. An absolute 
sovereign may command to any extent he pleases — 
what shall be believed as well as what shall be done. 
Hence Implicit Faith, the Authority which the 
Church has alleged for the basis of Belief. Hence 
too prohibitions against reason and reasoning which 
have marked the Church under all its forms, in all 
its phases and divisions and subdivisions. 

Reason too is human ; then it is material ; to set 
it up against Faith were to set up the Material 
against the Spiritual ; the Human against the Di- 
vine ; Man against God : for the Church being God 
by proxy, by representation, it has of course the 
right to consider whatever is set up against the 
faith it enjoins as set up against God. 

The Civil Order, if it be any thing more than a 
function of the Church, belongs to the category of 
Matter. It is then inferior to the Church. It is 
then bound to obey the Church. Hence the claims 
of the Church over civil institutions, its right to 
bestow the crowns of kings, to place kingdoms 
under ban, to absolve subjects from their allegiance, 



24 THE CHURCH. 

and all the wars and antagonism between Church 
and State. 

The spiritual order alone is holy. Its interests 
are then the only interests it is not sinful to labor 
to promote. In laboring to promote them, the 
Church was under the necessity of laboring for it- 
self. Hence its justification to itself of its selfish- 
ness, its rapacity, its untiring efforts to aggrandize 
itself at the expense of individuals and of states. 

As the interests of the Church alone were holy, 
it was of course sinful to be devoted to any others. 
All the interests of the material order, that is, all 
temporal interests, were sinful, and the Church 
never ceased to call them so. Hence its perpetual 
denunciation of v»^ealth, place and renown, and the 
obstacles it always placed in the way of all direct 
efforts for the promotion of well-being on earth. 
This is the reason why it has discouraged, indeed 
unchurched, anathematized, all efforts to gain civil 
and political liberty, and always regarded with an 
evil eye all industry not directly or indirectly in its 
own interests. 

This same exclusive Spiritualism borrowed from 
Asia, striking Matter with the curse of being un- 
clean in its nature, was the reason for enjoining 
Celibacy upon the Clergy. An idea of sanctity was 



THE CHURCH. 25 

attached to the ministerial office, which it was sup- 
posed any contact with the flesh would sully. It 
also led devotees, those who desired to lead lives 
strictly holy, to renounce the flesh, as well as the 
world and the devil, to take vows of perpetual 
celibacy and to shut themselves up in Monasteries 
and Nunneries. It is the origin of all those self- 
inflicted tortures, mortifications of the body, 
penances, fastings, and that neglect of this world 
for another, which fill so large a space in the his- 
tory of the Church during what are commonly 
called the ^^ dark ages.'' The Church in its theory 
looked always with horror upon all sensual indul- 
gences. Marriage was sinful, till purified by Holy 
Church. The song and the dance, innocent amuse- 
ments, and wholesome recreations, though some- 
times conceded to the incessant importunities of 
Matter, were of the devil. Even the gay dress 
and blithesome song of nature were offensive. A 
dark, silent, friar's frock was the only befitting garb 
for nature or for man. The beau ideal of a good 
Christian was one who renounced all his connex- 
ions with the world, became deaf to the voice of 
kindred and of friends, insensible to the sweetest and 
holiest emotions of humanity, immured himself in 
3 



26 THE CHURCH. 

a cave or cell, and did nothing the livelong day 
but count his beads and kiss the crucifix. 

Exceptions there were ; but this was the Idea, the 
dominant tendency of the Church. Thanks, how- 
ever, to the stubbornness of Matter, and to the 
superintending care of Providence, its dominant 
tendency always found powerful resistance, and its 
Idea was never able fully to realize itself 



CHAPTER III. 



PROTESTANTISM. 



Every thing must have its time. The Church 
abused, degraded, vilified Matter, but could not 
annihilate it. It existed in spite of the Church. 
It increased in power, and at length rose against 
Spiritualism and demanded the restoration of its 
rights. This rebellion of Materialism, of the ma- 
terial order against the Spiritual, is Protestantism. 

Matter always exerted a great influence over the 
practice of the Church. In the first three cen- 
turies it was very powerful. It condemned the 
Gnostics and Manichgeans as heretics, and was on 
the point of rising to empire under the form of 
Arianism. But the Oriental influence predomi- 
nated, and the Arians became acknowledged here- 
tics. 

After the defeat of Arianism, that noble protest 
in its day of Rationalism against Mysticism, of 
Matter against Spirit, of European against Asiatic 
ideas, the Church departed more and more from 



28 PR01ESTANTISM. 

the Atonement, and became more and more arro- 
gant, arbitrary, spiritualistic, papistical. Still Matter 
occasionally made itself heard. It could not prevent 
the celibacy of the clergy, but it did maintain the 
unity of the race and prevented the reestablishment 
of a sacerdotal caste, claiming by birth a superior 
sanctity. It broke out too in the form of Pelagian- 
ism, that doctrine w^hich denies that man is clean 
gone in iniquity, and which makes the material 
order count for something. Pelagius was the able 
defender of Humanity when it seemed to be deserted 
by all its friends, and his efforts were by no means 
unavailing. 

Matter asserted its rights and avenged itself in a 
less unexceptionable form in the Convents, the 
Monasteries and Nunneries, among the clergy of 
all ranks, in that gross licentiousness which led to 
the reformation attempted by Hildebrand ; and 
finally it ascended — not avowedly, but in reality — 
the papal throne, in the person of Leo X. 

The accession of Leo X. to the papal throne is 
a remarkable event in the history of the Church. 
It marks the predominance of material interests in 
the very bosom of the Church itself It is a proof 
that whatever might be the theory of the Church, 
however different it claimed to be from all other 



1 



PROTESTANTISM. 29 

powers, it was at this epoch in practice the same 
as the kingdoms of men. Poverty ceased in its eyes 
to be a virtue. The poor mendicant, the bare- 
footed friar, could no longer hope to become one 
day the spiritual head of Christendom. Spiritual 
gifts and graces were not now enough. High birth 
and royal pretensions were required ; and it was not 
as a priest, but as a member of the princely House 
of Medici that Leo became Pope. 

The object of the Church had changed. It had 
ceased to regard the spiritual wants and welfare 
of mankind. It had become wealthy. It had ac- 
quired vast portions of this world's goods, and its 
great care was to preserve them. Its interests had 
become temporal interests, and therefore it needed, 
not a spiritual Father, but a temporal prince. It 
is as a prince that Leo conducts himself His 
legates to the Imperial, English and French Courts, 
entered into negotiations altogether as ambassadors 
of a temporal prince, not as the simple representa- 
tives of the Church. 

Leo himself is a sensualist, sunk in his sensual 
pleasures, and perhaps a great sufferer in conse- 
quence of his excesses. It is said he was an Atheist, 
a thing more than probable. All his tastes were 

worldly. Instead of the sacred books of the Church, 
3# 



30 PROTESTANTISM. 

the pious legends of Saints and Martyrs, he amused 
himself with the elegant but profane literature of 
Greece and Rome. His principal secretaries were 
not holy monks but eminent classical scholars. 
He revived and enlarged the University at Rome, 
encouraged human learning and the arts of civiliza- 
tion, completed St. Peter's, and his reign was 
graced by Michael Angelo and Raphael. He en- 
gaged in wars and diplomacy and in them both had 
respect only to the goods of the Church, or to the 
interests of himself and family as temporal princes. 
Now all this was in direct opposition to the 
theory of the Church. Materialism was in the 
papal chair, but it was there as a usurper, as an 
illegitimate. It reigned in fact, but not in right. 
The Church was divided against itself. In theory 
it was Spiritualist, but in practice it was Material- 
ist. It could not long survive this inconsistency, 
and it needed not the attacks of Luther to hasten 
the day of its complete destruction. 

But Materialism must have become quite power- 
ful to have been able to usurp the papal throne 
itself It was indeed too powerful to bear patiently 
the name of usurper ; at least to be contented to 
reign only indirectly. It would be acknowledged 
as sovereign, and proclaimed legitimate. This the 



PROTESTANTISM. 31 

Church could not do. The Church could do noth- 
ing but cling to its old pretensions. To expel 
Materialism and return to Hildebrand was out of 
the question. To give up its claims, and own itself 
Materialist, would have been to abandon all title to 
even its material possessions, since it was by 
virtue of its spiritual character that it held them. 
Materialism — as it could reign in the Church only 
as it were by stealth — resolved to leave the Church 
and to reign in spite of it, against it, and even on 
its ruins. It protested, since it had all the power, 
against being called hard names, and armed itself 
in the person of Luther to vindicate its rights and 
to make its claims acknowledged. 

The dominant character of Protestantism is then 
the insurrection of Materialism, and what Ave call 
the Reformation is really a Revolution in favor of 
the material order. Spiritualism had exhausted its 
energies; it had done all it could for Humanity ; 
the time had come for the material element of our 
nature, which Spiritualism had neglected and gross- 
ly abused, to rise from its depressed condition and 
contribute its share to the general progress of man- 
kind. It rose, and in rising it brought up the 
whole series of terms the Church had disregarded. 
It brought up the state, civil liberty, human reason, 
philosophy, industry, all temporal interests. 



32 



PROTESTANTISM. 



In Protestantism, Greece and Rome revived and 
again carried their victorious arms into the East. 
The Reformation connects us with classical an- 
tiquity, with the beautiful and graceful forms of 
Grecian art and literature, and with Roman elo- 
quence and jurisprudence, as the Church had 
connected us with Judea, Egypt and India. 



CHAPTER IV. 



PROTESTANTISM, 



That Protestantism is the insurrection of Matter 
against Spirit, of the material against the spiritual 
order, is susceptible of very satisfactory historical 
verification. 

One of the most immediate and efficient causes 
of Protestantism was the Revival of Greek and 
Roman Literature. Constantinople was taken by 
the Turks, and its scholars and the remains of 
Classical Learning which it had preserved were 
dispersed over Western Europe. The Classics took 
possession of the Universities and the Learned, 
were studied, commented on, appealed to as an 
authority paramount to that of the Church and — 
Protestantism was born. 

By means of the Classics, the scholars of the 
Fifteenth Century were introduced to a world alto- 
gether unlike and much superior to that in which 
they lived — to an order of ideas wholly diverse 
from those avowed or tolerated by the Church. 



34 PROTESTANTISM. 

They were enchanted. They had found the Ideal 
of their dreams. They became disgusted with the 
present; they repelled the civilization effected by 
the Church, looked with contempt on its Fathers, 
Saints, Martyrs, Schoolmen, Troubadours, Knights 
and Minstrels, and sighed and yearned and labored 
to reproduce Athens or Rome. 

And what was that Athens and that Rome which 
seemed to them to realize the very Ideal of the 
Perfect ? We know very well to-day what they 
were. They were material ; through the whole 
period of their historical existence, it is well known 
that the material or temporal order predominated 
over the spiritual. They are not that old spiritual 
world of the East which reigned in the Church. 
In that old world — in India for instance — where 
Spiritualism has its throne, Man sinks before God, 
Matter fades away before the presence of Spirit, 
and Time is swallowed up in Eternity. Industry 
is in its incipient stages, and the state scarcely 
appears. There is no history, no chronology. All 
is dateless and unregistered. An inflexible and 
changeless tyranny weighs down the human race 
and paralyzes its energies. Ages on ages roll away 
and bring no melioration. Every thing remains as 
it was, monotonous and immovable as the Spirit it 
contemplates and adores. 



PROTESTANTISM. 35 

In Athens and Rome, all this is reversed. Human 
interests, the interests of mankind in time and 
space, predominate. Man is the most conspicuous 
figure in the group. He is every v^here, and his 
imprint is upon every thing. Industry flourishes ; 
commerce is encouraged ; the state is constituted, 
and tends to democracy ; citizens assemble to dis- 
cuss their common interests ; the orator harangues 
them ; the aspirant courts them ; the warrior and the 
statesman render them an account of their doings 
and avrait their award. The People — not the 
Gods — will, decree, make, unmake or modify the 
laws. Divinity does not become incarnate, as in 
the Asiatic world, but men are deified. History is 
not Theogony, but a record of human events and 
transactions. Poetry sings heroes, the great and 
renowned of earth, or chants at the festal board 
and the couch of voluptuousness. Art models its 
creations after human forms, for human pleasure or 
human convenience. They are human faces we 
see; human voices we hear; human dwellings in 
which we lodge and dream of human growth and 
human melioration. 

There are Gods and temples, and priests and 
oracles, and augurs and auguries, it is true ; but 
they are not like those we meet where Spiritualism 



36 PROTESTANTISM. 

reigns. The Gods are all anthropomorphous. Their 
forms are the perfection of the human. The allegori- 
cal beasts, the strange beasts, compounded of parts 
of many known and unknown beasts which meet 
us in Indian, Egyptian and Persian Mythology, as 
symbols of the Gods, are extinct. Priests are not a 
caste as they are under Spiritualism, springing 
from the head of Brama and claiming superior 
sanctity and power as their birth-right, but simple 
police officers. Religion is merely a function of 
the state. Socrates dies because he breaks the 
laws of Athens — not, as Jesus did — for blasphem- 
ing the Gods. Numa introduces or organizes Poly- 
theism at Rome for the purpose of governing the 
people by means of appeals to their sentiment of 
the Holy; and the Roman *^Pontifex Maximus" was 
never any thing more than a master of police. 

This in its generality is equally a description of 
Protestantism, as might indeed have been asserted 
beforehand. The epoch of the Revival of Classical 
Literature must have been predisposed to Material- 
ism or else it could not have been pleased with 
the Classics, and the influence of the Classics must 
have been to increase that predisposition, and as 
Protestantism was a result of both, it could be 
nothinor but Materialism. 



PROTESTANTISM. 37 

In classical antiquity religion is a function of the 
state. It is the same under Protestantism. Henry 
the Eighth of England declares himself supreme 
Head of the Church, not by virtue of his spiritual 
character, but by virtue of his character as a tem- 
poral prince. The Protestant princes of Germany 
are protectors of the Church ; and all over Europe, 
there is an implied contract between the State 
and the Ecclesiastical Authorities. The State 
pledges itself to support the Church on condition 
that the Church support the State. Ask the kings, 
nobility, or even church dignitaries, why they 
support religion, and they will answer with one 
voice, " Because the people cannot be preserved 
in order, cannot be made to submit to their rulers, 
and because civil society cannot exist, without it." 
The same or a similar answer will be returned by 
almost every political man in this country; and 
truly may it be said that religion is valued by the 
protestant world as a subsidiary to the state, as a 
mere matter of police. 

Under the reign of Spiritualism all questions 
are decided by authority. The Church prohibited 
reasoning. It commanded, and men were to obey 
or be counted rebels against God. Materialism, 
by raising up man and the state, makes the reason 
4 



38 PROTESTANTISM. 

of man, or the reason of the state, paramount to 
the commands of the Church. Under Protestant- 
ism, the state in most cases, the individual reason 
in a few, imposes the creed upon the Church. 
The King and Parliament in England determine 
the faith which the clergy must profess and main- 
tain ; the Protestant princes in Germany have the 
supreme control of the symbols of the Church, the 
right to enact what creed they please. 

Indeed the authority of the Church in matters 
of belief was regarded by the Reformers as one 
of the greatest evils, against which they had to con- 
tend. It was particularly against this authority 
that Luther protested. What he and his coadjutors 
demanded, was the right to read and interpret the 
Bible for themselves. This was the right they 
wrested from the Church. To have been conse- 
quent they should have retained it in their hands 
as individuals ; it would then have been the right 
of private judgment and, if it meant any thing, the 
right of the reason to sit in judgment on all propo- 
sitions to be believed. To this extent, however, 
they were not prepared to go. Between the 
absolute authority of the Church, and the absolute 
authority of the individual reason, intervened the 
authority of the state. But as the state was ma- 



II 



PROTESTANTISM. 39 

terial, the substitution of its authority for the 
authority of the Church was still to substitute the 
Material for the Spiritual. 

But the tendency, however arrested by the state, 
has been steadily towards the most unlimited 
freedom of thought and conscience. Our fathers 
rebelled against the authority of the state in reli- 
gious matters as well as against the authority of 
the Pope. In political and industrial speculations, 
the English and Americans give the fullest freedom 
to the individual reason ; Germany has done it to 
the greatest extent in historical, literary and philo- 
sophical, and to a very great extent, in theological 
matters, and France does it in every thing. All 
modern philosophy is built on the absolute freedom 
and independence of the individual reason ; that is, 
the reason of humanity, in opposition to the reason 
of the church or the state. Des Cartes refused to 
believe in his own existence but upon the authority 
of his reason ; Bacon allows no authority but 
observation and induction ; Berkeley finds no 
ground for admitting an external world, and there- 
fore denies it ; and Hume finding no certain evidence 
of any thing outward or inward, doubted — philo- 
sophically — of all things. 



40 PROTESTANTISM. 

Philosophy is a human creation ; it is the pro- 
duct of man, as the universe is of God. Under 
Spiritualism, then, which — in theory — demolishes 
man, there can be no philosophy ; yet as man, 
though denied, exists, there is a philosophical 
tendency. But this philosophical tendency is 
always either to Skepticism, Mysticism, or Idealism. 
Skepticism, that philosophy which denies all cer- 
tainty, made its first appearance in modern times 
in the Church. The Church declared the reason 
unworthy of confidence, and in doing that gave 
birth to the w^hole skeptical philosophy. When the 
authority of the Church was questioned and she 
was compelled to defend it, she did it on the ground 
that the reason could not be trusted as a criterion 
of truth, and that there could be no certainty for 
man, if he did not admit an authority independent 
of his reason, — not perceiving that if the reason 
were struck with impotence there would be no 
means of substantiating the legitimacy of the 
authority. 

On the other hand, the Church having its point 
of view in Spirit, consulted the soul before the body , 
became introspective, fixed on the Inward to the 
exclusion of the Outward. It overlooked the Out- 
ward ; and when that is overlooked it is hardly 



PROTESTANTISM. 41 

possible that it should not be denied. Hence 
Idealism or Mysticism. 

Under the reign of Materialism all this is chang- 
ed. There is fall confidence in the reason. The 
method of philosophizing is the experimental. But 
as the point of view is the Outward — Matter — 
Spirit is overlooked ; Matter alone admitted. 
Hence philosophical Materialism. And philosoph- 
ical Materialism, in germ or developed, has been 
commensurate with Protestantism. When the 
mind becomes fixed on the external world, in- 
asmuch as we become acquainted with that 
world only by means of our senses, we nat- 
urally conclude that our senses are our only 
source of knowledge. Hence Sensualism, the 
philosophy supported by Locke, Condillac, and 
even by Bacon, so far as it concerns his own ap- 
plication of his method. And from the hypothesis 
that our senses are our only inlets of knowledge, 
we are compelled to admit that nothing can be 
known which is not cognizable by some one or all 
of them. Our senses take cognizance only of 
Matter; then we can know nothing but Matter. 
We can know nothing of the spirit or soul. The 
body is all that we know of man. That dies, and 

there ends man — at least all we know of him. 

4# 



42 PROTESTANTISM. 

Hence no immortality, no future state. If nothing 
can be known but by means of our senses, God, 
then, inasmuch as we do not see him, hear him, taste 
him, smell him, touch him, cannot be known ; 
then he does not exist for us. Hence Atheism. 
Hence Modern Infidelity, in all its forms, so 
prevalent in the last century, and so far from being 
extinct even in this. 

The same tendency to exalt the terms depressed 
by the Church is to be observed in the religious 
aspect of Protestantism. Properly speaking, Prot- 
estantism has no religious character. As Protest- 
ants, people are not religious, but co-existing with 
their Protestantism, they may indeed retain some- 
thing of reliction. Men often act from mixed 
motives. They bear in their bosoms sometimes 
two antagonist principles, now obeying the one, 
and now the other, without being aware that both 
are not one and the same principle. With 
Protestants, religion has existed ; but as a reminis- 
cence, a tradition. Sometimes, indeed, the remem- 
brance has been very lively, and seemed very much 
like reality. The old soldier warms up with the 
recollections of his early feats, and lives over his 
life as he relates its events to his grandchild, — 

" Shoulders his crutch and shows how fields are won.'* 



PROTESTANTISM. 43 

If the religion of the Protestant world be a 
reminiscence, it must be the religion of the 
Church. It is, in fact, only Catholicism continued. 
The same principle lies at the bottom of all 
Protestant churches, in so far as they are churches, 
which was at the bottom of the Church of the 
middle ages. But Materialism modifies their 
rites and dogmas. In the practice of all, there is 
an effort to make them appear reasonable. Hence 
Commentaries, Expositions, and Defences without 
number. Even where the authority of the reason 
is denied, there is an instinctive sense of its author- 
ity and a desire to enlist it. In mere forms, pomp 
and splendor have gradually disappeared, and dry 
utility and even baldness have been consulted. In 
doctrines, those which exalt man and give him some 
share in the work of salvation have gained in credit 
and influence. Pelagianism, under some thin dis- 
guises or undisguised, has become almost universal. 
The doctrine of man's inherent Total Depravity, in 
the few cases in which it is asserted, is asserted, 
more as a matter of duty than of conviction. No- 
body, who can help it, preaches the old-fashioned 
doctrine of God's Sovereignty, expressed in the 
dogma of unconditional Election and Reprobation. 
The Vicarious Atonement has hardly a friend 



44 PROTESTANTISM. 

left. The Deity of Jesus is questioned, his simple 
Humanity is asserted and is gaining credence. 
Orthodox is a term which implies as much reproach 
as commendation ; people are beginning to laugh 
at the claims of councils and synods, and to be 
quite merry at the idea of excommunication. 

In Literature and Art there is the same tendency. 
Poetry in the last century hardly existed, and was, 
so far as it did exist, mainly ethical or descriptive. 
It had no revelations of the Infinite. Prose writers 
under Protestantism have been historians, critics, 
essayists, or controversalists ; they have aimed 
almost exclusively at the elevation or adornment of 
the material order, and in scarcely an instance has 
a widely popular writer exalted God at the expense 
of Man, the Church at the expense of the State, 
Faith at the expense of Reason, or Eternity at the 
expense of Time. Art is finite, and gives us busts 
and portraits, or copies of Greek and Roman mod- 
els. The Physical sciences take precedence of the 
Metaphysical, and faith in Rail-roads and Steam- 
boats is much stronger than in Ideas. 

In governments, the tendency is the same. No- 
thing is more characteristic of Protestantism, than 
its influence in promoting civil and political liberty. 
Under its reign all forms of governments verge 



PROTESTANTISM. 45 

towards the Democratic. " The King and the 
Church'^ are exchanged for the '^ Constitution and 
the People." Liberty, not Order, is the word that 
wakes the dead, and electrifies the masses. A 
social science is created, and the physical well- 
being of the humblest laborer is cared for, and 
made a subject of deliberation in the councils of 
nations. 

Industry has received in Protestant countries its 
grandest developments. Since the time of Luther, 
it has been performing one continued series of mir- 
acles. Every corner of the globe is explored ; 
the most distant and perilous seas are navigated ; 
the most miserly soil is laid under contribution ; 
manufactures, villages and cities spring up and 
increase as by enchantment ; canals and rail-roads 
are crossing the country in every direction ; the 
means of production, the comforts, conveniences 
and luxuries of life are multiplied to an extent 
hardly safe to relate. 

Such, in its most general aspect, in its dominant 
tendency, is Protestantism. It is a new and much 
improved edition of the Classics. Its civilization 
belongs to the same order as that of Greece and 
Rome. It is in advance, greatly in advance, of 
Greece and Rome, but it is the same in its ground- 



46 



PROTESTANTISM. 



work. The Material predominates over the Spirit- 
ual. Men labor six days for this world and at 
most but one for the ^^o^ld to come. The great 
strife is for temporal goods, fame or pleasure. God, 
the Soul, Heaven, and Eternity, are thrown into the 
back ground, and almost entirely disappear in the 
distance. Right yields to Expediency, and Duty is 
measured by Utility. The real character of protest- 
antism, the result to which it must come, wherever it 
can have its full development, may be best seen in 
France, at the close of the last century. The Church 
was converted into the Pantheon, and made a rest- 
ing place for the bodies of the great and renowned 
of earth : God was converted into a symbol of the 
human reason, and man into the Man-Machine ; 
Spiritualism fell, and the Revolution marked the 
complete triumph of Materialism. 



CHAPTER V. 

REACTION OF SPIRITUALISM. 

What I have said of the Protestant world cannot 
be applied to the present century without some 
important qualifications. Properly speaking, Pro- 
testantism finished its work and expired in the 
French Revolution at the close of the last century. 
Since then there has been a reaction in favor of 
Spiritualism. 

Men incline to exclusive Spiritualism in propor- 
tion to their want of faith in the practicability of 
improving their earthly condition. This accounts 
for the predominance of Spiritualism in the Church. 
The Church grew up and constituted itself amidst 
the crash of a falling world, when all it knew or 
could conceive of material well-being was crumb- 
ling in ruins around it. Greece and Rome were 
the prey of merciless barbarians. Society was 
apparently annihilated. Order there was none. — 
Security for person, property, or life, seemed 
almost the extravagant vagary of some mad enthu- 



4S 



REACTION OF 



siast. Lawless violence, brutal passion, besotting 
ignorance, tyrants and their victims, were the only 

spectacles presented to win men's re^jard tor the 
earth, or to inspire them with taith and hope to 
labor lor its improvement. To the generation of 
that day. when tlie North disgorged itself upon the 
South, th.e earth must have appeared tbrsaken by its 
Maker, and abandoned to the Devil and his minis- 
ters. It was a wretched land : it could yield no 
supply : and the only solace for the soul was to turn 
away from it to another and a better world, to the 
world of spirit : to that world where tyrants do not 
enter, where wrongs and oppression, sutierings and 
grief, tind no admission : where mutations and 
insecurity are unkno^^n. and v,here the poor earth- 
wanderer, the time-\vorn pilgrim, may at length 
tind that repose, that fulness of joy which he craved, 
which he souo-jit but found not below. This view 
was natural, it was inevitable : and it could lead 
only to exclusive spiritualism — mysticism. 

But when the external world has been somewhat 
meliorated, and ir.en find that they have some secu- 
ritv tor their persons and property, that they may 
count w ith some degree of certainty on to-morrow, 
faith in the material order is produced and con- 
firmed. One improvement prepares another. — 



SPIRITUALISM. 49 

Success inspires confidence in future efforts. And 
this was the case at the epoch of the Reformation. 
Men had already made great progress in the mate- 
rial order, in their temporal weal. Their faith in it 
kept pace with their progress, or more properly, 
outran it. It continued to extend till it became 
almost entire and universal. The Eighteenth 
Century will be marked in the annals of the world 
for its strong faith in the material order. Melio- 
rations on the broadest scale were contemplated 
and viewed as already realized. Our Republic 
sprang into being, and the world leaped with joy 
that '^ a man child was born." Social progress and 
the perfection of governments became the religious 
creed of the day ; the weal of man on earth, the 
spring and aim of all hopes and labors. A new 
paradise was imaged forth for man, inaccessible to 
the serpent, more delightful than that which Adam 
lost, and more attractive than that which the pious 
Christian hopes to gain. We of this generation can 
form only a faint conception of the strong faith our 
fathers had in the progress of society, the high 
hopes of human improvement they indulged, and 
the joy too big for utterance, with which they 
heard France in loud and kindling tones proclaim 
Liberty and Equality. France for a moment 
5 



50 REACTION OF 

became the centre of the world. All eyes were 
fixed on her movements. The pulse stood still 
when she and her enemies met, and loud cheers 
burst from the universal heart of Humanity when 
her tri-colored flag was seen to wave in triumph 
over the battle field. There was then no stray 
thought for God and eternity. Man and the world 
filled the soul. They were too big for it. But 
while the voice of Hope was yet ringing, and 
Te Deum shaking the arches of the old Cathedrals, 
— the Convention, the reign of Terror, the exile 
of patriots, the massacre of the gifted, the beau- 
tiful and the good, Napoleon and the Military Des- 
potism came, and Humanity uttered a piercing 
shriek, and fell prostrate on the grave of her 
hopes ! 

The reaction produced by the catastrophe of this 
memorable drama was tremendous. There are 
still lingering among us those who have not for- 
gotten the recoil they experienced when they saw 
the Republic swallowed up, or preparing to be 
swallowed up, in the Empire. Men never feel 
what they felt but once. The pang which darts 
through their souls changes them into stone. — 
From that moment enthusiasm died, hope in social 
melioration ceased to be indulged, and those who 



SPIRITUALISM. 51 

had been the most sanguine in their anticipations, 
hung down their heads and said nothing ; the 
warmest friends of Humanity apologized for their 
dreams of Liberty and Equality ; Democracy be- 
came an accusation, and faith in the perfectibility 
of mankind a proof of disordered intellect. 

In consequence of this reaction, men again 
despaired of the earth; and when they despair of 
the earth, they always take refuge in heaven; when 
man fails them, they always fly to God. They had 
trusted materialism too far — they would now not 
trust it at all. They had hoped too much — they 
would now hope nothing. The future, which had 
been to them so bright and promising, was now 
overspread with black clouds; the ocean on which 
they were anxious to embark was lashed into rage 
by the storm, and presented only images of dis- 
masted or sinking ships and drowning crews. — 
They turned back and sighed for the serene past, 
the quiet and order of old times, for the mystic 
land of India, where the soul may dissolve in ecstasy 
and dream of no change. 

At the very moment when the sigh had just 
escaped, that mystic land reappeared. The Eng- 
lish, through the East India Company, had brought 
to light its old Literature and Philosophy, so diverse 



52 R E A C T I O N OF 

from the Literature and Philosophy of modern Eu- 
rope or of classical antiquity, and men were capti- 
vated by their novelty and bewildered by their 
strangeness. Sir William Jones gave currency to 
them by his poetical paraphrases and imitations : 
and the Asiatic Society by its researches placed 
them wuthin reach of the learned of Europe. The 
Church rejoiced, for it was like bringing back 
her long lost mother, whose features she had 
remembered and was able at once to recognise. — 
Germany, England, and even France became Ori- 
ental. Cicero, and Horace, and Virgil, JEschylus, 
Euripides, and even Homer, with Jupiter, Apolk) 
and Minerva were forced to bow before Hindoo 
Bards and Gods of uncouth forms and unutterable 
names. 

The influence of the old Braminical or spiritual 
world, thus dug up from the grave of centuries, may 
be traced in all our Philosophy, Art and Literature. 
It is remarkable in our poets. It moulds the form 
in Byron, penetrates to the ground in Wordsworth, 
and entirely predominates in the Schlegels. It 
causes us to feel a new interest in those writers and 
those epochs which partake the most of Spiritualism. 
Those old English writers who were somewhat in- 
clined to mysticism are revived; Plato, who travelled 



SPIRITUALISM. 53 

in the East and brought back its lore which he 
modified by Western genius and moulded into 
Grecian forms, is reedited, commented on, trans- 
lated and raised to the highest rank among phi- 
losophers. The middle ages are reexamined and 
found to contain a treasure of romance, acuteness, 
depth and wisdom, and are deemed by some to be 
**dark ages" only because we have not light 
enough to read them. 

Materialism in Philosophy is extinct in Germany. 
It is only a reminiscence in France, and it produces 
no remarkable work in England or America. 
Phrenology, which some deem Materialism, has 
itself struck Materialism with death in Gall's Work, 
by showing that we are conscious of phenomena 
within us which no metaphysical alchemy can 
transmute into sensations. 

Protestantism, since the commencement of the 
present century, in what it has peculiar to itself, 
has ceased to gain ground. Rationalism in Ger- 
many retreats before the Evangelical party; the 
Genevan Church makes few proselytes; English and 
American Unitarianism, on the plan of Priestley and 
Belsham, avowedly material, and being, as it were, 
the jumping-off place from the Church to absolute 
infidelity, is evidently on the decline. There is 
5* 



^ 



REACTION OF 



probably not a man in this country, however much 
and justly he may esteem Priestley and Belsham, 
as bold and untiring advocates of reason and of 

Humanity, who would be willing to assume the 
defence of all their opinions. On the other hand 
Catholicism has revived, offered some able apolo- 
gies for itself, made some eminent proselytes and 
alarmed many Protestants, even among ourselves. 
Indeed every where is seen a decided tendency 
to Spiritualism. The age has become weary of 
uncertainty. It sighs for repose. Controversy is 
nearly ended, and a sentiment is extensively pre- 
vailing, that it is a matter of very little consequence 
what a man believes, or what formulas of worship 
he adopts, if he only have a ricrht spirit. Men, 
who a few years ago were staunch Rationalists, 
now talk of Spiritual Communion : and many, who 
could with ditiicuity be made to admit the inspira- 
tion of the Bible, are now ready to admit the 
inspiration of the sacred books of all nations ; and 
instead of stumbling at the idea of God's speaking 
to a i^ew individuals, they see no reason why he 
should not speak to every body. Some are becom- 
ing so spiritual that they see no necessity of matter ^ 
others so refine matter that it can offer no resist- 
ance to the will, making it indeed move as the spirit 



SPIRITUALISM. 55 

listeth; others still believe that all wisdom was in 
the keeping of the priests of ancient India, Egypt, 
and Persia, and fancy the world has been deteriorat- 
ing for four thousand years, instead of advancing. 
Men go out from our midst to Europe, and come 
back half Catholics, sighing to introduce the 
architecture, the superstition, the rites and the 
sacred symbols of the middle ages. 

A universal cry is raised against the frigid utili- 
tarianism of the last century. Money-getting, 
desire for worldly wealth and renown, are spoken of 
with contempt, and men are evidently leaving the 
Outward for the Inward, and craving something 
more fervent, living and soul-kindling. All this 
proves that we have changed from what we were ; 
that, though Materialism yet predominates and 
appears to have lost none of its influence, it is be- 
coming a tradition ; and that there is a new force 
collecting to expel it. Protestantism passes into 
the condition of a reminiscence. Protestant 
America cannot be aroused against the Catholics. 
A mob may burn a convent from momentary ex- 
citement, but the most protestant of the Protestants 
among us will petition the Legislature to indemni- 
fy the owners. Indeed Protestantism died in the 
French Revolution, and we are beginning to be- 



56 REACTION OF SPIRITUALISM. 



come disgusted with its dead body. The East 
has reappeared, and Spiritualism revives ; will it 
again become supreme ? Impossible.. 



CHAPTER VL 

MISSION OF THE PRESENT. 

We of the present century must either dispense 
with all religious instructions, reproduce Spiritual- 
ism or Materialism, or we must build a new 
Church, organize a new institution free from the 
imperfections of those which have been. 

The first is out of the question. Men cannot 
live in a perpetual anarchy. They must and will 
embody their ideas of the True, the Beautiful, and 
the Good — the Holy, in some institution. They 
must answer in some way the questions. What is 
the Holy ? What is the true destination of Man ? 

To reproduce Spiritualism or Materialism, were 
an anomaly in the development of Humanity. 
Humanity does not traverse an eternal circle ; it 
advances ; it does not come round to its starting- 
point, but goes onward in one endless career of 
progress towards the Infinite, the Perfect. 

Besides, it is impossible. Were it desirable, 
neither Spiritualism nor Materialism can to any 



58 M I S S I O N F 

considerable extent, or for any great length of time, 
become predominant. We cannot bring about that 
state of society which is the indispensable condition 
of the exclusive dominion of either. 

Spiritualism just now revives ; its friends may 
anticipate a victory ; but they will be disappointed. 
Spiritualism, as an exclusive system, reigns only 
when men have no faith in material interests; and 
in order to have no faith in material interests, we 
must virtually destroy them ; we must have abso- 
lute despotism, a sacerdotal caste, or we must 
have another Decline and Fall like that of the 
Roman Empire, and a new irruption like that of 
the Goths, Vandals and Huns. 

None of these things are possible. There are 
no more Goths, Vandals, or Huns. The North of 
Europe is civilized. Northern and central Asia 
is in the process of civilization through the 
influence of Russia; England is mingling the arts 
and sciences of the West with the Spiritualism of 
India; France and the colony of Liberia secure 
Africa ; the Aborigines of this continent will in a 
few years have vanished before the continued 
advance of the European races ; merchants and 
missionaries will do the rest. No external forces 
can then ever be collected to destroy civilization 



THE PRESENT. 59 

and compel the human race to commence its work 
ane w. 

Internally, modern civilization has nothing to 
fear. It contains no seeds of destruction. A real 
advance has been made. A vast fund of experi- 
ence has been accumulated and is deposited in so 
many different languages, that we can hardly con- 
ceive it possible that it should be wholly lost or 
greatly diminished. The Art of Printing, un- 
known to Greek and Roman civilization, multiplies 
books to such an extent, that it is perfectly 
idle to dream of any catastrophe, unless it be the 
destruction of the world itself, which will reduce 
them to a few precious fragments like those left 
us of classical antiquity. 

There is, too, a renmrkable difference in the dif- 
fusion of knowledge. In the best days of classical 
antiquity, the number of the enlightened was but 
small. The masses were enveloped in thick 
darkness. Now the masses have been to school, 
and are going to school. The millions, who then 
were in darkness,, now behold light springing up. 
The loss of one individual, however prominent he 
may be, is not felt. Another is immediately found 
to fill his place. 



60 MISSION OF 

Liberty exists also to a much greater extent. 
The rights of man are better comprehended and 
secured. The individual man is a greater be- 
ing than he was in Greece or Rome. He has a 
higher consciousness of his worth, and he is 
more respected, and his interests are felt to be 
more sacred. 

Labor has become more honorable. In Greece 
and Rome labor was menial ; it was performed by 
slaves, at least by the ignorant and brutish. Slave- 
ry is disappearing. It has only a small corner of 
the civilized world left to it. As slavery disappears, 
as labor comes to be performed by freemen, it will 
rise to the rank of a liberal profession, and men 
of character and influence will be laborers. 

The improvements in the arts of production 
have become so extensive, and the means of creat- 
ing and accumulating wealth are so distributed, 
and the amount of wealth has already become so 
great and is shared by so many, that it is impossible 
that there should ever come again a scene of gen- 
eral poverty and wretchedness to make men 
despair of the earth, and abandon themselves 
wholly to the dreams of a spirit-land. There 
must always remain something to hope from the 
material order, and consequently, whatever may be 



' 



THE PRESENT. 61 

the influence of a sudden panic, or a momentary 
affright, always a check to the absolute dominion of 
Spiritualism. 

Nor can Materialism become sovereign again. 
It contains the elements of its own defeat. The 
very discipline, which Materialism demands to 
support itself, in the end neutralizes its dominion. 
As soon as men find themselves well off in a 
worldly point of view, they discover that they have 
wants which the world does not and cannot satisfy. 
The training demanded to ensure success in com- 
merce, industrial enterprises, or politics, strength- 
ens faculties which crave something superior to 
commerce, to mere industry, or to politics. The 
merchant w^ould not be always estimating the 
hazards of speculation ; he dreams of his retire- 
ment from business, his splendid mansion, his 
refined hospitality, a library, and studious ease ; the 
mechanic looks forward to a time when he shall 
have leisure to care for something besides merely 
animal wants ; and the politician to his release from 
the cares and perplexities of a public life, to a quiet 
retreat, to a dignified old age, spent in plans of 
benevolence, in aiding the cause of education, 
religion, or philosophy. This low business world, 
upon which the moralist and the divine look down 
6 



62 M I S S I O N OF 

with so much sorrow, is not quite so low after all, 
as they think it. It is doing a vast deal to devel- 
ope the intellect. It is full of high and expanded 
brows. 

It is true that money getting, mere physical 
utility has at this moment a wide influence, and 
may absorb the mind and heart quite too much. 
Still the evil is not unmixed. That man, who tor- 
tures his brain, spends his days and nights to accu- 
mulate a fortune, is much superior to him who 
is content to rot in poverty, who has no courage, 
no energy to attempt to improve his condition. He 
is a better member of society, is worth more to 
humanity. It is a great day, even for spiritualism, 
when all the people of a country are carried away 
in an industrial direction. Speculation may be 
rife, frauds may be common ; many may become 
rich by means they care not to make known ; many 
may become discontented ; there may be much 
striving this way and that, much effort to get up, 
keep up, to pull or to push down ; but the many 
will sharpen their faculties, and gain the leisure 
and the means and the disposition to attend to the 
spiritual part of their being. It does my heart good 
to witness the industrial activity of my countrymen. 
I see very clearly the evils which attend it ; but I 



THE PRESENT. 63 

also see every year the general level rising, and the 
moral and intellectual power increasing. So is it 
too with our political struggles. They quicken 
thought, give the people the use of language, a 
consciousness of their power, especially of the 
power of mind, and upon the whole they do much 
to elevate the general character. Those quiet 
times we look back upon and regret, either were 
not as quiet as we think them, or they were quiet 
because they had not enough of thought to move 
them. They were as still, but too often as putrid, 
as the stagnant pool. 

The science which is now introduced into com- 
merce, into the mechanic arts and agricultural pur- 
suits, and which is every day receiving a greater 
extension and new applications, while it preserves the 
material order, also keeps alive the spiritual, and 
gives us a check against the absolute ascendancy of 
Materialism. 

We cannot then go back either to exclusive 
Spiritualism, or to exclusive Materialism. Both 
these systems have received so full a development, 
have acquired so much strength, that neither can 
be subdued. Both have their foundation in our 
nature, and both will exist and exert their influence. 
Shall they exist as antagonist principles? Shall 



64 ]M I S S I N O F 

the spirit forever lust against the flesh, and the 
flesh against the spirit ? Is the bosom of Humanity 
to be eternally torn by these two contending fac- 
tions? No. It cannot be. The war must end. 
Peace must be made. 

This discloses our Mission. We are to recon- 
cile spirit and matter ; that is, we must realize the 
atonement. Nothing else remains for us to do. — 
Stand still we cannot. To go back is equally 
impossible. We must go forward, but we can take 
not a step forward, but on the condition of uniting 
these two hitherto hostile principles. Progress is 
our law and our first step is Union. 

The union of Spirit and Matter was the re- 
sult contemplated by the mission of Jesus. The 
Church attempted it, but only partially succeeded, 
and has therefore died. The time had not come 
for the complete union. Jesus saw this. He 
knew that the age in which he lived would not be 
able to realize his conception. He therefore spoke 
of his '^ second coming." The Church has always 
had a vague presentiment of its own death, and 
the birth of a new era when Christ should really 
reign on earth. For a long time the hierophants 
have fixed upon ours as the epoch of the com- 
mencement of the new order of thinors. Some 



ITHE PRESENT. 65 

have gone even so far as to name this very year, 
1836, as the beginning of what they call the Mil- 
lennium. 

The particular shape vi^hich has been assigned to 
this new order, this ^Matter day glory," the name 
by which it has been designated, amounts to no- 
thing. That some have anticipated a personal 
appearance of Jesus, and a resurrection of the 
saints, should not induce us to treat with disrespect 
the almost unanimous belief of Christendom in a 
fuller manifestation of Christian truth, and in a 
more special reign of Christ in a future epoch of 
the world. All the presentiments of Humanity are 
to be respected. Humanity has a prophetic power. 
— *^ Coming events cast their shadows before." 

The *^ second coming " of Christ will be when 
the Idea which he represents, that is, the Idea of 
atonement, shall be fully realized. That Idea 
will be realized by a combination, a union, of the 
two terms which have received thus far from the 
Church only a separate development. This union 
the Church has always had a presentiment of; it 
has looked forward to it, prayed for it ; and we 
are still praying for it, for we still say, ^* Let thy 
kingdom come." Nobody believes that the Gospel 
has completed its work. The Church universal 
6* 



66 



MISSION OF THE PRESENT. 



and eternal is not yet erected. The corner stone 
is laid ; the materials are prepared. Let then the 
workmen come forth with joy, and bid the Temple 
rise. Let them embody the true Idea of the God- 
Man, and Christ will then have come a second 
time ; he will have come in power and great glory, 
and he will reign, and the whole earth will be glad. 



CHAPTER VII. 



CHRISTIAN SECTS. 



This age must realize the Atonement, the union 
of Spirit and Matter, the destruction of all Antag- 
onism and the production of universal peace. 

God has appointed us to build the new Church, 
the one which shall bring the whole family of Man 
within its sacred enclosure, which shall be able to 
abide the ravages of time, and against which '^ the 
gates of hell shall not prevail.'' 

But we can do this only by a general doctrine 
which enables us to recognise and accept all the 
elements of Humanity. If we leave out any one 
element of our nature, we shall have antagonism. 
Our system will be incomplete and the element 
excluded will be forever rising up in rebellion 
against it and collecting forces to destroy its 
authority. 

All sects overlook this important truth. None 
of them seem to imagine that human nature has or 



68 CHRISTIAN SECTS. 

should have any hand in the construction of their 
theories. Instead of studying human nature, as- 
certaining its elements and its wants, and seeking 
to conform to them, every sect labors to conform 
human nature to its own creed. No one dreams 
of moulding its dogmas to human nature, but every 
one would mould human nature to its dogmas. 
Every one is a bed of Procrustes. What is too 
short must be stretched, what is too long must be 
docked. No sect ever looks to human nature as 
the measure of truth ; but all look to what they 
are pleased to call the truth, as the measure of 
human nature. 

This were well enough if human nature had only 
been made of wax, or some other ductile material. 
But unfortunately it is very stubborn. It will not 
bend. It will not be mutilated. Its laws are per- 
manent and universal ; each one of them is eternal 
and indestructible. They war in vain who war 
against them. Be they good or be they bad, we 
must accept them, we must submit to them and 
do the best we can with them. 

But human nature is well made, its laws are 
just and holy, its elements are true and divine. 
And this is the hidden sense of that symbol of the 
God-Man. That symbol teaches all who compre- 



CHRISTIAN SECTS. 69 

hend it, to find Divinity in Humanity, and Humani- 
ty in Divinity. By presenting us God and Man 
united in one person, it shows us that both are 
holy. The Father and the Son are one. There- 
fore we are commanded to honor the Son as we 
honor the Father, Humanity as Divinity, Man as 
well as God. But the Church has never understood 
this. No sect now understands it. Hence the 
contempt with which all sects treat human nature, 
and their entire want of confidence in it as a cri- 
terion of truth. They must correct themselves. 
^* The Word was made flesh and dwelt among 
us.^' 

To reject human nature and declare it unwor- 
thy of confidence as the Church did, and as all 
sects now do, is — whether we know it or not — to 
reject all grounds of certainty, and to declare 
that we have no means of distinguishing truth from 
falsehood. Truth itself is nothing else to us than 
that which our nature by some one or all of its 
faculties compels us to believe. The fact that 
God has made us a revelation does not in the 
least impair this assertion. God has revealed to us 
truths which we could not of ourselves have dis- 
covered. But how do we know this ? What is it 
but the human mind that can determine whether 



70 CHRISTIAN SECTS. 

God has or has not spoken to us? What but the 
human mind can ascertain and fix the meaning of 
what he may have communicated ? If we may 
not trust the human mind, human nature, how can 
we ever be sure that a revelation has been made? 
or how distinguish a real revelation from a pre- 
tended one? By miracles? But how determine 
that what are alleged to be miracles, really are 
miracles ? or the more difficult question still, that 
the miracles, admitting them to be genuine, do 
necessarily involve the truth of the doctrines they 
are wrought to prove ? Shall we be told that we 
must believe the revelation is a true one, because 
made by an authorized teacher? Where is the 
warrant of his authority? What shall assure us 
that the warrant is not a forgery? Have we any 
thing but our own nature with which to answer 
these and a hundred more questions like them and 
equally important ? 

If human nature has the ability and the right to 
answer these questions, where are the limits of its 
ability and its right ? If we trust it when it assures 
us God has spoken to us, and when it interprets 
what he has spoken, where shall we not trust it ? 
If it be no criterion of truth, why do we trust it 
here? And if it be, why do we disclaim it else- 



CHRISTIAN SECTS. 71 

where ? Why declare it worthy of confidence in 
one case and not in another ? It is the same in 
all cases, in all its degrees ; and whether it testi- 
fies to that which is little, or to that which is 
great, it is the same, and its testimony is of pre- 
cisely the same validity. 

If we admit that human nature is the measure of 
truth, — of truth for us, human beings — then we 
admit that it is the criterion by which all sects must 
be tested. It is then the touchstone of truth. 
Every sect must be approved or condemned ac- 
cording to its decision. No sect must blame 
Humanity for not believing its doctrines. If after 
they have been fairly presented and fully compre- 
hended they are rejected, they are proved to be 
false, or at least to be only partially true. It is no 
recommendation to advocate doctrines repugnant 
to human nature ; nor is it any reproach to defend 
those which are pleasing to the natural heart. Hu- 
manity loves the truth and can be satisfied with 
nothing else. The sect, then, which ceases to make 
converts should abandon or enlarge its creed. 

Sects in general are and will be slow to learn 
this truth. Each sect, because it has all the truth 
to be seen from its stand-point, takes it for granted 
that it has the whole truth. It does not even 



72 CHRISTIAN SECTS. 

dream that there may be other stand-points, from 
which other truths may be seen, or the same truths 
under other aspects ; and therefore it concludes 
when its doctrines are rejected, that they are 
rejected because human nature is perverse or 
impotent, because men cannot or will not see the 
truth, or because they naturally hate it. Let it 
change its position and it will soon learn that the 
horizon, which it took to be the boundary of truth, 
was in fact only the boundary of its own vision. 

All sects, however, have their truth and are ser- 
viceable to Humanity. Each one has a special 
doctrine which gives prominence to some one ele- 
ment of our nature, and is therefore satisfactory to 
all in whom that element predominates. But as 
that element, however important a one it may be, is 
not the whole of human nature, and as it can 
hardly be predominant alike in all men, no sect 
can satisfy entire Humanity. Each sect does 
something to develope and satisfy the separate 
elements of Humanity, but no one can develope and 
satisfy all the elements of Humanity and satisfy 
them as a whole. 

Spiritualism and Materialism are the two most 
comprehensive sectarian doctrines which have 
ever been proclaimed. But neither of these is 



CHRISTIAN SECTS. 73 

comprehensive enough. Either may satisfy a 
large class of wants, but each must leave a class 
equally as large unsatisfied. One has always 
been opposed by the other, and mutual opposition 
has finally destroyed them both. Humanity is still 
sighing for what it has not. It is seeking rest but 
finds none. And rest it will not find, till its un- 
tiring friends gain a stand-point, from which, as 
with one grand panoramic view, they may take in 
all its elements in their relative proportions, and 
exact distances, in their diversity and in their uni- 
ty, till they have gone up and down the earth and 
collected and brought together its disjointed mem- 
bers, which contending sects have torn asunder, 
and moulded them into one complete and lovely 
form of truth and holiness. 

Where is the Christian sect that is engaged in 
this work? Where is the one that deems it 
desirable or possible? All the sects of Chris- 
tendom, so far as it concerns their dominant 
tendency, fall into the category of Spiritualism, or 
into that of Materialism. Catholicism is virtually 
the Church of the middle ages. It is but a remi- 
niscence. It has no life, at least no healthy ex- 
istence. It belongs to Spiritualism. Calvinism, 
bating some few modifications produced by Prot- 
7 



74 CHRISTIAN SECTS. 

estant influence, is only a continuation of Catho- 
licism. It is decidedly Spiritualistic. Its prayers, 
its hymns and homilies are deeply imprinted with 
Spiritualism. It repels the material order, and ex- 
horts us to crucify the flesh, to disregard the world 
and to think only of God, the soul and eternity. 

In the opinion of the Calvinist, the world lies 
under the curse of the Almighty. It is a wretched 
land, a vale of tears, of disease and death. There 
is no happiness below. It is vain, almost impious, 
to wish it till death comes to release us from the 
infirmities of the flesh. As long as we live we sin ; 
we must carry about a weary load, an overwhelm- 
ing burthen, a body of death, Man is a poor, 
depraved creature. He is smitten with a curse, 
and the curse spreads over his whole nature. 
There is nothing good within him. Of himself he 
can obtain, he can do, nothing good. He is un- 
clean in the sight of God. His sacrifices are an 
abomination, and his holiest prayers are sinful. 
His will is perverted ; his affections are all on the 
side of evil ; his reason is deprived of its light, it is 
blind and impotent, and will lead those who trust to 
its guidance down to hell. 

By its doctrine of **Foreordination," Calvinism 
annihilates man. It allows him no independent 



CHRISTIAN SECTS. 75 

causality. It permits him to move only as a pre- 
ordaining and irresistible will moves him. It makes 
him a thing, not a person, with properties but 
without faculties or rights. Whatever his destiny, 
however cruel, he has no right to complain. Spirit 
is absolute and has the right to receive him into 
blessedness or send him away into everlasting 
punishment, without any regard to his own wishes, 
merit or demerit. Hence Calvinists always give 
supremacy to the Spiritual order. They fled from 
England to this then wilderness world, because 
they would not conform to a Church established by 
the state ; and when here they constituted the 
Church superior to the state. In theory the Pil- 
grims made the state a mere function of the 
Church. In order to be a citizen it was necessary 
that one should first be a church member. And 
for the last twenty years the great body of Cal- 
vinists throughout our whole country have been 
exerting all their skill and influence to raise the 
Church to that eminence from which it may over- 
look the state, control its deliberations and decide 
its measures. 

His doctrine of " hereditary total Depravity '' has 
always compelled the Calvinist to reject Reason 
and to rely on Authority — to seek faith, not con- 



76 CHRISTIAN SECTS. 

viction. Protestant influences prevent him in these 
days from submitting to an infallible Pope, but he 
indemnifies himself by infallible creeds, councils, 
synods and assemblies. Or if these fail him, he 
can ascribe infallibility to the '^ written Word.'^ 
Always does he prohibit himself the free exercise 
of his own understanding, and prescribe bounds 
beyond which reason and reasoning must not 
venture. 

By the dogma of Christ's vicarious death, he 
takes his stand decidedly with Spiritualism, denies 
the Atonement, loses sight of the Mediator, and 
rejects the God-Man. He cannot then build the 
new Church, the Church truly universal and eter- 
nal. It is in vain that we ask him to destroy all 
antagonism. He does not even wish to do it; 
before the foundations of the world, its origin and 
eternity were decreed. God and the devil, the 
saint and the sinner, in his estimation, are alike im- 
mortal. 

Universalism would seem to a superficial ob- 
server to be what we need. Its friends call it the 
doctrine of universal reconciliation, and they group 
around the love of God that which constitutes the 
real harmony and unity of creation. But Univer- 
salists do not understand themselves. They have 



CHRISTIAN SECTS. 77 

a vague sense of the truth, but not a clear percep- 
tion of it. As soon as they begin to explain them- 
selves, they file off either to the ranks of Spirit- 
ualism, or of Materialism. 

The larger number of Universalists, among 
whom is, or was, the chief of the sect, contend 
that all sin originates in the flesh and must end 
with it. The flesh ends at death, when it is de- 
posited in the tomb; therefore, ''he that is dead 
is freed from sin.'' Sin is the cause of all suffer- 
ing ; when sin ends, suffering ends. Sin ends at 
death, and therefore after death no suffering, but 
universal happiness. 

This doctrine is as decidedly Spiritualism as 
oriental Spiritualism itself If the body be the 
cause of all sin, it certainly deserves no respect. 
It is a vile thing, and should be despised, mortified, 
punished, annihilated. Universalists do not draw this 
inference, but they avoid it only by really denying 
that there is any sin, or at least by considering the 
consequences of sin of too little importance to be 
dreaded. 

The body, however, according to this doctrine 
is a curse. Man would be better off without it 
than he is with it. It deserves nothing on its 

own account. Wherefore then shall I labor to 

7# 



78 CHRISTIAN SECTS. 

make it comfortable? I shall be released from 
it to-morrow, and enter into a world of unutterable 
joy. Let my lodging to-night be on the bare 
ground, in the open air, destitute of a few conven- 
iencies, what imports it? Can I not afford to 
forego a pleasant lodging for one night, since I am 
ever after to be filled and overflowing with blessed- 
ness? Universalism, then, according to this expo- 
sition of it, must inevitably lead to neglect of the 
material order. Its legitimate result would be, not 
licentiousness, but a dreaming, contemplative life, 
wasting itself away in idleness, watching the motion 
of the sun, and wishing it to move faster, so that 
we may be the sooner translated from this miser- 
able world, where nothing is worth laboring for, to 
our Father's kingdom where is music and dancing, 
songs and feasting forever and ever. 

Universalists have, however, existing side by side 
with this exclusive Spiritualism, some strong ten- 
dencies to Materialism. Spiritualism and Materi- 
alism are nearly balanced in their minds, and 
constitute, not a union of spirit and matter, but 
a parallelism which has no tendency to union. 
But when the true doctrine of the Atonement is pro- 
claimed, Universalists will be among the first be- 
lievers. None will rejoice more than they, to see 



CHRISTIAN SECTS. 79 

the new Church rise from the ruins of the old, and 
none will attend more readily or with more zeal at 
its consecration. 

Unitarianism belongs to the material order. It 
is the last word of Protestantism, before Protestant- 
ism breaks entirely with the Past. It is the point 
towards which all Protestant sects converge in 
proportion as they gain upon their reminiscences. 
Every consistent Protestant Christian must be a 
Unitarian. Unitarianism elevates man ; it preaches 
morality ; it vindicates the rights of the mind, accepts 
and uses the reason, contends for civil freedom, 
and is social, charitable and humane. It saves the 
Son of man, but sometimes loses the Son of God. 

But it is from the Unitarians that must come out 
the doctrine of universal reconciliation ; for they are 
the only denomination in Christendom that labors 
to rest religious faith on rational conviction; that 
seeks to substitute reason for authority, to harmo- 
nize religion and science, or that has the requisite 
union of piety and mental freedom, to elaborate 
the doctrine which is to realize the Atonement. The 
orthodox, as they are called, are disturbed by their 
memory. Their faces are on the back side of their 
heads. They have zeal, energy, perseverance, but 
their ideas belong to the past. The Universalists 



80 



CHRISTIAN SECTS. 



can do nothing till some one arises to give them a 
philosophy. They must comprehend their instincts, 
before they can give to their doctrine of reconcilia- 
tion that character which will adapt it to the wants 
of entire Humanity. 

But Unitarians are every day breaking away more 
and more from tradition, and every day making 
new progress in the creation of a philosophy which 
explains Humanity, determines its wants and the 
means of supplying them. Mind at this moment is 
extremely active among them, and as it can act freely 
it will most certainly elaborate the great doctrine 
required. They began in Rationalism. Their 
earlier doctrines were dry and cold. And this was.- 
necessary. They were called at first to a work of 
destruction. They were under the necessity of 
clearing away the rubbish of the old Church, before 
they could obtain a site whereon to erect the new 
one. The Unitarian preacher was under the neces- 
sity of raising a stern and commanding voice in the 
wilderness, " Prepare ye the way of the Lord, 
make his paths straight.'' He raised that voice, 
and the chief Priests and Pharisees in modern 
Judea heard and trembled, and some have gone 
forth to be baptised. The Unitarian has baptised 
them with water unto repentance, but he has borne 



CHRISTIAN SECTS. 81 

witness that a mightier than he shall come after 
him, who shall baptise them with the Holy Ghost 
and with fire. 

When the Unitarian appeared, there was on this 
whole earth no spot for the Temple of the living 
God, the temple of Reason, Love and Peace. For 
such a spot he contended. He has obtained it. 
He has begun the Temple ; its foundations already 
appear, and although the workmen must yet work 
with their arms in one hand, he will see it com- 
pleted, consecrated, and filled with the glory of the 
Lord, 



CHAPTER VIII. 

INDICATIONS OF THE ATONEMENT. 

The Church was the result of three causes, the 
Asiatic conquests of the Romans, the Alexandrian 
school of Philosophy, and the Christian movement 
of the people. 

By the Asiatic conquests of the Romans, Spirit- 
ualism and Materialism were brought together upon 
the same theatre, and placed in the condition neces- 
sary to their union. Eastern and Western ideas 
were mingled in strange confusion throughout the 
whole of the Roman Empire during the first three 
centuries of our era, and the attempt to unite them, 
to combine them into a regular and harmonious 
system could hardly fail to be made. 

This attempt was made by the Alexandrian Phi- 
losophers. These Philosophers called themselves 
eclectics. Their avowed object was to unite the 
East and the West, European and Asiatic ideas, to 
reduce to a regular system the ideas of all the 
various schools of philosophy. They did it as 



INDICATIONS OF ATONEMENT. 83 

perfectly as they could with the lights they had and 
the experiments they had made. 

The Christian movement of the people was appa- 
rently very unlike that of the Alexandrian. The 
early Christians were the farthest in the world 
from being philosophers. They were inspired. 
They were moved by an impulse of which they 
asked, and could have given no account. God 
moved in them, and spoke through them ; gave 
them a lofty enthusiasm, a resistless energy of 
character, and prepared them to do, to dare and to 
suffer any thing and every thing. At his command 
they went forth to conquer the world, and they did 
conquer it; not, as it has been well remarked, by 
killing, but by dying.* 

We understand to-day what it was that moved 
the early Christians. What was inspiration in 
them is philosophy in us. They had an instinctive 
sense of the synthesis of Spirit and Matter. Yet 
they thought nothing of Spirit and Matter. They 
disturbed themselves not in the least with Spiritual- 
ism and Materialism, with the East and the West, 
with Europe and Asia. They saw mankind sunk in 
sin and misery, weary and heavy laden, and they 

* Benjamin Constant. 



84 INDICATIONS OF 

went forth strong in the Lord to raise them to 
virtue, to convert them to Christ and to give them 
rest. They did not speculate, they did not reason — 
they saw and felt and acted. 

These and the Alexandrians met, and the Church 
was the result. The share of the Alexandrians in 
the construction of the Church has always been 
acknowledged to be very great. Perhaps it was 
greater than any have suspected. Certain it is that 
they furnished the Fathers their philosophy, and 
they may be pronounced without much hesitation, 
the real elaborators — not of Christianity, but — 
of the dogmas of the Church. 

All men feel more or less the desire to account 
to themselves for what they are. For a time they 
may be carried away by a force not their own, and 
they may be so engrossed with varied and exciting 
action and events, that they have no time to think ; 
but at the first moments of calmness and self-con- 
sciousness they will ask what has moved them, 
what was the power which carried them away and 
whither have they been borne. This was the case 
with the early Christians. The first excitement 
over, and the visits of inspiration having become 
less frequent, they desired to explain themselves to 
themselves, to give a name to the instincts they 



THE ATONEMENT. 85 

had obeyed, to the Divinity which had moved 
them, and to the destiny they had been fulfilling. 
The Alexandrians answered all their questions. 
They explained the Christians to themselves, and 
henceforth their explanations were counted Chris- 
tianity. 

These three causes of the old Church, or analo- 
gous ones, reappear to-day for the first time since 
that Epoch ; and is not their reappearance an 
indication that a new Church is about to be built? 

The East and the West are again on the same 
theatre. The British by means of their East India 
Company have reconquered the father-land of 
Spiritualism, and brought up from the graves of 
ages its old Literature and Philosophy, and mingled 
them with those of the West, the father-land of 
Materialism. The Church itself has introduced 
not a little Spiritualism into Christian civilisation, 
while Protestantism by encouraging the study of 
the classics has reproduced Greece and Rome. 
The two worlds, the two civilisations, the two 
systems to be atoned or united are now in very 
nearly the same relative condition as they were at 
the birth of the Church. They are thrown together 
into the crucible. 
8 



86 INDICATIONS OF 

Alexandria, too, is reproduced with the modifi- 
cations and improvements which two thousand 
years could not fail to effect. Eclecticism is 
declared to be the philosophy of the nineteenth 
century. Not one of the exclusive systems, which 
obtained during the last century, has now any life. 
Materialism is a tradition even in France ; Idealism 
has exhausted itself in Germany, and England has 
no philosophy. 

Schelling had at least a presentiment of Eclecti- 
cism in his doctrine of Identity ; Hegel has greatly 
abridged the labors of its friends ; Fries and his 
disciples observe its method, and Jacobi virtually 
embraced it. In our own country it has produced 
no great work, and perhaps will not ; but it is 
avowed by many of the best minds among us, and is 
the only philosophy we have, that has not ceased 
to make proselytes. 

In France, however. Eclecticism has received its 
fullest developments. M. Cousin has all but perfected 
it. He has presented us the last results of the 
philosophical labors of his predecessors and con- 
temporaries, and furnished us with a method by 
which we may construct a philosophy which may 
truly be called the Science of the Absolute, a 
philosophy which need not fear the mutations of 



THE ATONEMENT. 87 

time and space, and may be sure that its sovereignty 
will be complete and undisputed as fast and as 
far as it comes to be understood. 

M. Cousin has not only oriven us, as it were, a 
geometrical demonstration of the existence of 
Nature and of God, but he has also demonstrated 
that Humanity, Nature and God have precisely 
the same laws, that what we find in Nature and 
Humanity we may also find in God, and that when 
we have once risen to God, we may come back 
and find again in Nature and Humanity all that we 
had found in him. This at once destroys all 
antithesis between Spirit and Matter, between 
God and man, gives man a kindred nature 
with God, makes him an image or manifesta- 
tion of God, and paves the way for universal 
reconciliation and peace.* If God be holy, man, 
inasmuch as he has the very elements of the 
Divinity, is also holy. God and man may then 
unite in an everlasting and holy union. Justice and 



* See my Article on Cousin's Philosophy in the Christian 
Examiner, for September, 1836. Also, Cousin's Philosophical 
Works every where, especially the V. and VI. Lectures of his 
" Cours," in 1828, and the Preface to the 2d Edition of his 
Fragmens philosophiques. 



88 INDICATIONS OF 

Mercy kiss each other, and — all antagonism is 
destroyed. 

The third cause, the inspiration of the people, 
is no less remarkable now than it was in the first 
centuries of our era. When God would produce 
a great result, one which requires the cooperation 
of vast multitudes, he does not merely inspire one 
man ; he does not speak plainly in distinct proposi- 
tions to a few, and leave them to speak to the 
many ; but he gives an impulse to the masses, and 
carries away all the world in the direction of the 
object to be gained. People seem to themselves to 
be acting from their own impulses, and to be obey- 
ing their own convictions ; but they are borne 
along by an invisible and resistless power towards 
an end of which they have a vague presentiment, 
but no distinct vision. 

This is the case now. The time has come for a 
new Church, for a new synthesis of the elements 
of the life of Humanity. The end to be attained 
is Union. How would an inspiration designed to 
give the energy, the power to attain this end be 
most likely to manrfest itself; in Vvhat w^ay could 
it manifest itself but by giving the people an irre- 
sistible longing for union, and a tendency to unite, 
to associate on all occasions and for all purposes 



I 



THE ATONEMENT. 89 

not inconsistent with union itself? And what is 
the most strikino- characteristic of this ao^e? Is it 
not the tendency to association, a tendency so 
strong that it appears to the cool spectator like a 
monomania? 

This tendency shows itself every where. All over 
Christendom, men seem mad for associations. 
They associate for almost every thing, to promote 
science, literature, art and industry, to circu- 
late the Bible, to distribute religious tracts, to 
diffuse useful knowledge, to improve and extend 
education, to meliorate governments and laws, to 
soften the rigors of the prison-house, to aid the 
sick, to relieve the poor, to prevent pauperism, to 
free the slave, to send out missionaries, and to 
evangelize the world. And — what deserves to be 
remarked — all these associations, various as they 
are, really propose in every instance a great and 
glorious end. They all are formed for useful, 
moral, religious, philosophical, philanthropical or 
humane purposes. They may be badly managed, 
they may fail in accomplishing what they propose, 
but that which they propose deserves. to be accom- 
plished. Sectarians may control them ; but in all 
cases their ends are broader than any sect, than all 
sects, and they alike commend themselves to the 



90 INDICATIONS OF 

consciences and the prayers of mankind. In some 
of these associations, sects long and widely separ- 
ated come together, and find to their mutual satis- 
faction that they have a common ground, and a 
ground which each one instinctively admits to be 
higher and holier than any merely sectarian 
ground. 

This tendency too is triumphing over all obsta- 
cles. Sects, which opposed this or that association 
because principally under the control of this or 
that sect, have slowly and reluctantly ceased their 
opposition, and have finally acquiesced. Individ- 
uals, who for a time resorted to ridicule and abuse 
to check associations, are now silent, and they 
stand amazed as did those who listened to the 
Apostles on the day of Pentecost. Those who 
apprehended great evils from them now seek to 
withstand them only by counter associations. To 
resist them is in fact out of the question. One 
might as well resist the whirlwind. There is a 
more than human power at the bottom of them. 
They come from God, from a divine inspiration 
given to the people to build the new Church and 
realize the Atonement, a universal and everlasting 
association. 



THE ATONEMENT. 91 

This tendency or inspiration will, in a few days, 
meet the Eclectic movement, if it have not already 
met it ; and what shall prevent a result similar to 
that which followed the meeting of the early Chris- 
tian inspiration and the Alexandrian Eclecticism ? 
This inspiration is, indeed, at this moment, 
apparently blind, but it and Modern Philosophy 
tend to the same end. They have then the same 
truth at bottom. They must then have a natural 
affinity with one another. They will then come 
together. The philosophy will explain and enlighten 
the inspiration. They who are now mad for asso- 
ciations will comprehend the power which has 
moved them, they will see the end towards which 
they have been tending without their knowing it, 
and they will give to the philosopher in return 
zeal, energy, enthusiasm, and there will then be 
both the Light and the Force needed to construct 
the new Church. 

And I think I see some indications that this 
meeting of inspiration and philosophy is already 
taking place. Something like it has occurred in 
Germany, in that movement commenced by Herder, 
but best represented by Schleiermacher, a man 
remarkable for warmth of feeling, and coolness of 
thought, a preacher and a philosopher, a theologian 



92 INDICATIONS OF 

and a man of science, a student and a man of 
business. It was attempted in France, where it gave 
birth to ^' Nouveau Christianisme," bat without 
much success, because it is not a new Christianity 
but a new Church that is required. 

But the plainest indications of it are at home. 
In this country more than in any other is the man 
of thought united in the same person with the man 
of action. The people here have a strong ten- 
dency to profound and philosophic thought, as well 
as to skilful, energetic and persevering action. 
The time is not far distant when our whole popu- 
lation will be philosophers, and all our philosophers 
will be practical men. This is written on almost 
every man's brow in characters so plain that he 
who runs may read. This characteristic of our 
population fits us above all other nations to bring 
out and realize great and important ideas. Here 
too is the freedom which other nations want, and 
the faith in ideas which can be found nowhere else. 
Philosophers in other countries may think and con- 
struct important theories, but they can realize them 
only to a very limited extent. But here every idea 
may be at once put to a practical test, and if true 
it will be realized. We have the field, the liberty, 
the disposition and the faith to work with ideas. 



THE ATONEMENT. 93 

It is here then that must first be brought out and 
realized the true idea of the Atonement. We 
already seem to have a consciousness of this, and 
it is therefore that we are not and cannot be sur- 
prised to find the union of popular inspiration with 
profound philosophical thought manifesting itself 
more clearly here than any where else. 

The representative of this union here is a body 
of individuals rather than a single individual. The 
many with us are every thing, the individual almost 
nothing. One man, however, stands out from this 
body, a more perfect type of the synthesis of Eclec- 
ticism and inspiration than any one else. I need 
not name him. Philosophers consult him, and the 
people hear his voice and follow him. His con- 
nexion with a particular denomination may have 
exposed him to some unfriendly criticism, but he is 
in truth one of the most popular men of the age. 
His voice finds a response in the mind and in the 
heart of Humanity. 

His active career commenced with the new cen- 
tury, in the place where it should, and in the only 
place where it could, — in the place where a Re- 
public had been born and Liberty had received her 
grandest developments and her surest safeguards. 
There he has continued, and there he has been 



94 INDICATIONS OF 

foremost in laying the foundation of that new 
Church which will soon rise to areet the mornincr 
ray, and in which a glad voice will chant the hymn 
of peace to the evening sun. Few men are so 
remarkable for their union of deep religious feeling 
with sound reflection, of sobriety with popular 
enthusiasm. He reveres God and he reverences 
man. When he speaks he convinces and kindles. 

When Rationalism was attacked he appeared in 
its defence and proclaimed, in a language which 
still rings in our ears, the imprescriptible rights of 
the mind. After the first shock of the war upon 
Rationalism had been met, and a momentary truce 
tacitly declared, he brought out in an Ordination 
Sermon the great truth which destroys all antagon- 
ism and realizes the Atonement. In that Sermon — 
the most remarkable since the Sermon on the 
Mount — he distinctly recognises and triumphantly 
vindicates the God-Man. '^ In ourselves are the 
elements of the Divinity. God then does not sus- 
tain a figurative resemblance to man. It is the 
resemblance of a parent to a child, the likeness 
OF A KINDRED NATURE." In this sublime declara- 
tion, the Son of God is owned. Humanity, after so 
many years of vain search for a Father, finds itself 
here openly proclaimed the true child of God. 



THEATONEMENT. 95 

This declaration gives us the hidden sense of the 
symbol of the God-Man. By asserting the Divinity 
of Humanity, it teaches us that we should not view 
that symbol as the symbol of two natures in one 
person, but of kindred natures in two persons. 
The God-Man indicates not the antithesis of God 
and man ; nor does it stand for a being alone of its 
kind ; but it indicates the homogeneousness of the 
human and divine natures, and shows that they can 
dwell together in love and peace. The Son of 
Man and the Son of God are not two persons but 
one — a mystery which becomes clear the very 
moment that the human nature is discovered to 
have a sameness with the Divine. 



CHAPTER IX. 



THE ATONEMENT. 



The great doctrine, which is to realize the Atone- 
ment and which the Symbol of the God-Man now 
teaches us, is that all things are essentially holy, 
that every thing is cleansed, and that we must call 
nothing common or unclean. 

^^ And God saw every thing that he had made, 
and behold it was very good." And what else 
could it have been? God is wise, powerful and 
good ; and how can a wise, powerful and good 
being create evil ? God is the orreat Fountain from 
which flows every thing that is ; how then can there 
be any thing but good in existence ? 

Neither Spiritualism nor Materialism was aware 
of this truth. Spiritualism saw good only in pure 
Spirit. God was pure Spirit and therefore good ; 
but all which could be distinguished from him 
was evil, and only evil and that continually. Our 
good consisted in resemblance to God, that is, in 
being as like pure Spirit as possible. Our duty 



THE ATONEMENT. 97 

was to get rid of Matter. All the interests of the 
material order were sinful. St. Augustine declared 
the flesh, that is the body, to be sin ; perfection 
then could be obtained only by neglecting, and as 
far as possible, annihilating it. Materialism, on the 
other hand, had no recognition of Spirit. It con- 
sidered all time and thought and labor bestowed on 
that which transcends this world as worse than 
thrown away. It had no conception of inward 
communion with God. It counted fears of punish- 
ment or hopes of reward in a world to come mere 
idle fancies, fit only to amuse or control the vulgar. 
It laughed at spiritual joys and griefs, and treated as 
serious affairs only the pleasures and pains of sense. 
But the new doctrine of the Atonement recon- 
ciles these two warring systems. This doctrine 
teaches us that spirit is real and holy, that matter 
is real and holy, that God is holy and that man is 
holy, that spiritual joys and griefs, and the pleas- 
ures and pains of sense, are alike real joys and 
griefs, real pleasures and pains, and in their places 
are alike sacred. Spirit and Matter, then, are 
saved. One is not required to be sacrificed to the 
other ; both may and should coexist as separate 
elements of the same grand and harmonious whole. 
9 



98 THE ATONEMENT. 

The influence of this doctrine cannot fail to be 
very great. It will correct our estimate of man, of 
the world, of religion and of God, and remodel all 
our institutions. It must in fact create a new 
civilisation as much in advance of ours, as ours is 
in advance of that which obtained in the Roman 
Empire in the time of Jesus. 

Hitherto we have considered man as the antith- 
esis of all good. We have loaded him with re- 
proachful epithets and made it a sin in him even 
to be born. We have uniformly deemed it neces- 
sary to degrade him in order to exalt his Creator. 
But this will end. The slave will become a son. 
Man is hereafter to stand erect before God as a 
child before its father. Human nature, at which 
we have pointed our wit and vented our spleen, 
will be clothed with a high and commanding worth. 
It will be seen to be a lofty and deathless nature. 
It will be felt to be Divine, and Infinite will be 
found traced in living characters on all its faculties. 

We shall not treat one another then as we do 
now. Man w^ill be sacred in the eyes of man. 
To wrong him will be more than crime, it will be 
sin. To labor to degrade him will seem like labor- 
ing to degrade the Divinity. Man will reverence 
man. 



THE ATONEMENT. 99 

Slavery will cease. Man will shudder at the 
bare idea of enslaving so noble a being as man. 
It will seem to him hardly less daring than to 
presume to task the motions of the Deity and to 
compel him to come and go at our bidding. When 
man learns the true value of man, the chains of 
the captive must be unloosed and the fetters of the 
slave fall off. 

Wars will fail. The sword will be beaten into 
the ploughshare and the spear into the pruning 
hook. Man will not dare to mar and mangle the 
shrine of the Divinity. The God looking out from 
human eyes will disarm the soldier and make him 
kneel to him he had risen up to slay. The war- 
horse will cease to bathe his fetlocks in human 
gore. He will snuff the breeze in the wild freedom 
of his native plains, or quietly submit to be har- 
nessed to the plough. The hero's occupation will 
be gone, and heroism will be found only in saving 
and blessing human life. 

Education will destroy the empire of ignorance. 
The human mind, allied as it is to the Divine, is 
too valuable to lie waste or to be left to breed 
only briars and thorns. Those children, ragged 
and incrusted with filth, which throng our streets, 
and for whom we must one day build prisons, forge 



100 THE ATONEMENT. 

bolts and bars, or erect gibbets, are not only our 
children, our brother's children, but they are child- 
ren of God, they have in themselves the elements 
of the Divinity and powers which when put forth 
will raise them above what the tallest archangel 
now is. And when this is seen and felt, will those 
children be left to fester in ignorance or to grow 
up in vice and crime? The whole energy of man's 
being cries out against such folly, such gross 
injustice. 

Civil freedom will become universal. It will be 
every where felt that one man has no right over 
another which that other has not over him. All 
will be seen to be brothers and equals in the sight 
of their common Father. All will love one another 
too much to desire to play the tyrant. Human 
nature will be reverenced too much not to be 
allowed to have free scope for the full and harmo- 
nious development of all its faculties. Govern- 
ments wdll become sacred ; and while on the one 
hand they are respected and obeyed, on the other 
it will be felt to be a relitrious rio-ht and a religious 
duty, to labor to make them as perfect as they can 
be. 

Religion will not stop with the command to obey 
the laws, but it w^ill bid us make just laws, such 



THE ATONEMENT. 101 

laws as befit a being divinely endowed like man. 
The Church will be on the side of progress, and 
Spiritualism and Materialism will combine to make 
man's earthly condition as near like the lost Eden 
of the Eastern poets, as is compatible with the 
growth and perfection of his nature. 

Industry will be holy. The cultivation of the 
earth will be the worship of God. Working- 
men will be priests, and as priests they will be 
reverenced, and as priests they will reverence 
themselves and feel that they must maintain them- 
selves undefiled. He that ministers at the altar 
must be pure, will be said of the mechanic, the 
agriculturist, the common laborer, as well as of 
him who is technically called a priest. 

The earth itself and the animals which inhabit it 
will be counted sacred. We shall study in them 
the manifestation of God's goodness, wisdom, and 
power, and be careful that we make of them none 
but a holy use. 

Man's body will be deemed holy. It will be 
called the temple of the Living God. As a temple 
it must not be desecrated. Men will beware of 
defiling it by sin, by any excessive or improper in- 
dulgence, as they would of defiling the temple or 

the altar consecrated to the service of God. Man 
9# 



102 THE ATONEMENT. 

will reverence himself too much, he will see too 
much of the Holy in his nature ever to pervert it 
from the right line of Truth and Duty. 

'' In that day shall there be on the bells of the 
horses, Holiness unto the Lord ; and the pots 
in the Lord's house shall be as the bowls before the 
altar. Yea, every pot in Jerusalem and in Judah 
shall be Holiness unto the Lord of hosts.'' The 
words of the prophet will be fulfilled. All things 
proceed from God and are therefore holy. Every 
duty, every act necessary to be done, every imple- 
ment of industry, or thing contributing to human 
use or convenience, w^ll be treated as holy. We 
shall recall even the reverence of the Indian for his 
bow and arrow, and by enlightening it with a Di- 
vine philosophy preserve it. 

*' Pure religion, and undefiled before God and the 
Father is this. To visit the fatherless and the widows 
in their affliction, and to keep oneself unspotted 
from the w^orld." Religious worship will not be 
the mere service of the sanctuary. The universe 
will be God's temple, and its service w^ill be the 
doing of good to mankind, relieving suffering and 
promoting joy, virtue and well-being. By this, 
religion and morality will be united, and the ser- 
vice of God and the service of man become the 



THE ATONEMENT. 103 

same. Our faith in God will show itself by our 
good works to man. Our love to the Father, 
whom we have not seen, will be evinced by our 
love for our brother whom we have seen. 

Church and State will become one. The State 
will be holy, and the Church will be holy. Both 
will aim at the same thing, and the existence 
of one as separate from the other will not be 
needed. The Church will not be then an outward 
visible power, coexisting with the State, sometimes 
controlling it and at other times controlled by it; 
but it will be within, a true spiritual -— not spiritu- 
alistic — Church, regulating the heart, the con- 
science and the life. 

And when this all takes place the glory of the 
Lord will be manifested unto the ends of the earth, 
and all flesh will see it and rejoice together. The 
time is yet distant before this will be fully realized. 
We are now realizing it in our theory. We assert 
the holiness of all things. This assertion becomes 
an idea, and ideas, if they are true, are omnipotent. 
As soon as Humanity fully possesses this idea, it 
will lose no time in reducing it to practice. Men 
will conform their practice to it. They will be- 
come personally holy. Holiness will be written on 
all their thoughts, emotions and actions, on their 



104 THE ATONEMENT. 

whole lives. And then will Christ really be formed 
within, the hope of glory. He will be truly incar- 
nated in universal Humanity, and God and man 
will be one. 



CHAPTER X 



PROGRESS. 



The actual existence of evil, the effects of which 
are every where so visible, and apparently so de- 
plorable, may seem to be a serious objection to the 
great doctrine of the Atonement, that all things 
are essentially good and holy ; but it will present 
little difficulty, if we consider that God designed 
us to be progressive beings, and that we can be 
progressive beings only on the condition that we be 
made less perfect than we may become, that we 
have our point of departure at a distance from our 
point of destination. We must begin in weakness 
and ignorance ; and if we begin in weakness and 
ignorance we cannot fail to miss our way, or fre- 
quently to want strength to pursue it. To err in 
judgment or to come short in action will be our 
unavoidable lot, until we are instructed by experi- 
ence and strengthened by exertion. 

But this is no ground of complaint. We gain 
more than we lose by it. Had we without any 



106 PROGRESS. 

agency of our own been made all that by a pro- 
per cultivation of our faculties we may become, we 
should have been much inferior to what we now^ 
are. We could have had no want, no desire, 
no good to seek, no end to gain, no destiny to 
achieve — no employment, and no motive to action. 
Our existence would have been aimless, silent and 
unvaried, given apparently for no purpose but to be 
dreamed away in an eternal and unbroken repose. 
Who could desire such an existence ? Who would 
prefer it to the existence w^e now have, liable to 
error, sin and misery as it may be ? 

Constituted as we are, the way is more than the 
end, the acquisition more than the possession ; 
but had we been made at once all that is promised 
us by our nature, these would have been nothing ; 
we should indeed have had the end, the possession, 
but that w^ould have been all. We should have 
been men without having first been children. 
Our earlier life, its trials and temptations, its fail- 
ures and its successes, would never have existed. 
Would we willingly forego that earlier life? Dear 
to all men is the memory of childhood and youth ; 
dear too is the recollection of their difficulties and 
dangers, their struggles with the world or with our 
own passions. We may regret, do regret, suffer 



PROGRESS. 107 

remorse, that we did not put ourselves forth with 
more energy, that the enemy with which we had to 
contend was not more manfully met ; but who of 
us is the craven to wish those difficulties and dan- 
gers had been less, or that the enemy's forces had 
been fewer and weaker ? 

<jod gave his richest gift when he gave the ca- 
pacity for progress. This capacity is the chief 
glory of our nature, the brightest signature of its 
Divine origin and the pledge of its immortality. 
The being which can make no farther progress, 
which has finished its work, achieved its destiny, 
attained its end, must die. Why should it live ? 
How could it live? What would be its life? But 
man never attains his end; he never achieves his 
destiny ; he never finishes his work ; he has always 
something to do, some new acquisition to make, 
some new height of excellence to ascend, and there- 
fore is he immortal. He cannot die, for his hour 
never comes. He is never ready. Who would then 
be deprived of his capacity for progress? 

This capacity, though it be the occasion of 
error and sin, is that which makes us moral beings. 
Without it we could not be virtuous. A being that 
does not make himself, his own character, but is 
made, and made all he is or can be, has no free will, 



108 PROGRESS. 

no liberty. He is a thing, not a person, and as in- 
capable of merit or demerit as the sun or moon, 
earthquakes or volcanoes. As much superior as is 
a moral to a fatal action, a perfection wrought out 
in and by oneself to a perfection merely received, 
as much superior as is a person to a thing, albeit a 
glorious thing, so much do we gain by being made 
for progress, by having a capacity for virtue, not- 
withstanding it be also a capacity for sin, so much 
superior are we to what we should have been, had 
we been created fall grown men, with all our facul- 
ties perfected. 

But moral evil, by the superintending care of 
Providence and the free will of man, is often if not 
always a means of aiding progress itself The 
sinner is not so far from God as the merely in- 
nocent. He who has failed is farther onward 
than he who has not been tried. The consequences 
of error open our eyes to the truth ; the consequen- 
ces of transgression make us regret our departure 
from duty and try to return ; the effort to return 
gives us the power to return. Thus does moral 
evil ever work its own destruction. Rightly 
viewed, it were seen to be no entity, no positive 
existence, but merely the absence of good, the void 
around and within us, and which by the enlarge- 



PROGRESS. 109 

ment of our being, we are continually filling up. 
It is not then a person, a thing, a being, and con- 
sequently can make nothing against the doctrine, 
which asserts the essential holiness of all things. 

Bat men formerly supposed evil to be a substan- 
tial existence, as much of an entity as goodness. 
But then came the difficulty, whence could evil 
originate ? It could not come from a good source, 
for good will not and cannot produce evil. But 
evil exists. Then all things do not come from the 
same source. One good and holy God has not 
made whatever is. There must be more Gods than 
one. There must be an evil God to create evil, as 
well as a good God to create good. Hence the no- 
tion of two Gods, or two classes of Gods, one good 
and the other bad, which runs through all antiquity, 
and under the terms God and the Devil, is repro- 
duced even in the Christian church. 

But this notion is easily shown to be unfounded. 
If one of the two Gods depend on the other, then 
the other must be its cause, its creator. In this 
case, nothing would be gained. How could a good 
God create a bad one, or a bad God create a good 
one? If one does not depend on the other, then 
both are independent, each is sufficient for itself 
A being that is sufficient for itself, that has the 
10 



110 PROGRESS. 

grounds of its existence within itself, must be 
absolute, almighty. There are then two absolutes, 
two almighties ; but this is an absurdity, a contra- 
diction in terms. This notion then must be aban- 
doned. It was abandoned, and the evil was trans- 
ferred to Matter. But Matter is either created or 
it is not. If it be created, then it is dependent, 
and that on which it is dependent is answerable for 
its properties. How could a good God have given 
it evil properties? If it be not created, then it is 
sufficient for itself; it has the grounds of its own 
existence within itself; it is then absolute, almighty, 
and the absurdity of two absolutes, of two al- 
mighties, is reproduced. 

Still we need not wonder that men, who saw 
good and evil thickly strown together up and down 
the earth, the tares every w^here choking the wheat, 
should have inferred the existence of two opposite 
and antagonist principles, as the cause of what they 
saw. Nor is it at all strange that men, who felt 
themselves restrained, hemmed in, by the material 
world, who carried about with them a material 
body for ever importuning them with its wants and 
subjecting them to a thousand ills, should have 
looked upon Matter as the cause of all the evil they 
saw, felt and endured. As things presented them- 



PROGRESS. Ill 

selves to their observation they judged rightly. 
We may, by the aid of a revelation, w^hich shines 
farther into the darkness and spreads a clearer light 
around us and over the Universe than any they had 
received, be able to correct their errors, and to 
perceive that the antagonism, in vi^hich they believ- 
ed, has no existence in the world of reality ; but we 
must beware how we censure them for the views 
they took. They saw what they could see with 
their light and from their position, and we can do 
no more. Future generations will have more favor- 
able positions and a stronger and clearer light than 
we have, and they will be to us what we are to the 
generations which went before us. As we would 
escape the condemnation of our children, so should 
we refrain from condemning our fathers. They 
did their duty, let us do ours, — serve our own 
generation without defaming that to which we owe 
our existence and all that we are. All things are 
holy, and all doctrines are sacred. All the produc- 
tions of the ever-teeming brain of man, however 
fantastic or unsubstantial their forms, are but so 
many manifestations of Humanity, and Humanity 
is a manifestation of the Divinity. The Son of 
Man is the Incarnate God. He who blasphemes 
the spirit with which he works and fulfils his mis- 



112 PROGRESS. 

sion in the flesh, blasphemes the Holy Ghost. Si- 
lent then be the tongue that would lisp, palsied 
the hand that would write the smallest censure 
upon Humanity for any of the opinions it has ex- 
pressed, however defective, however far from 
embracing the whole truth, future or more favored 
inquirers may find them. Humanity is holy, let the 
proudest kneel in reverence. 

This doctrine of progress, not only accounts for 
the origin of evil and explains its difficulties, but it 
points out to us our duty. The duty of every 
being is to follow its destiny, to seek its end. 
Man's destiny is illimitable progress ; his end is 
everlasting growth, enlargement of his being. 
Progress is the end for which he was made. To 
this end, then, it is his duty to direct all his inquiries, 
all his systems of religion and philosophy, all his 
institutions of politics and society, all the produc- 
tions of genius and taste, in one word all the 
modes of his activity. 

This is his duty. Hitherto he has performed it, 
but blindly, without knowing and without admitting 
it. Humanity has but to-day, as it were, risen to 
self-consciousness, to a perception of its own ca- 
pacity, to a glimpse of its inconceivably grand and 
holy destiny. Heretofore it has failed to recognise 



PROGRESS. 113 

clearly its duty. It has advanced, but not design- 
edly, not with foresight ; it has done it instinctively, 
by the aid of the invisible but safe-guiding hand of 
its Father. Without knowing what it did, it has 
condemned progress, while it was progressing. It 
has stoned the prophets and reformers, even while 
it was itself reforming and uttering glorious proph- 
ecies of its future condition. But the time has 
now come for Humanity to understand itself, to ac- 
cept the law imposed upon it for its own good, to 
foresee its end and march with intention steadily 
towards it. Its future religion is the religion of 
progress. The true priests are those who can 
quicken in mankind a desire for progress, and urge 
them forward in the direction of the True, the 
Good, the Perfect. 



Here I must close. I have uttered the words 
Union and Progress as the authentic creed of the 
New Church, as designating the whole duty of man. 
Would they had been spoken in a clearer, a louder 
and a sweeter voice, that a response might be heard 
from the universal heart of Humanity. But I 
10* 



114 PROGRESS. 

have spoken as I could, and from a motive which I 
shall not blush to own either to myself or to Him 
to whom all must render an account of all their 
thoughts, words and deeds. I once had no faith in 
Him, and I was to myself '' a child without a sire.'' 
I was alone in the world, my heart found no 
companionship, and my affections withered and 
died. But I have found Him, and he is my 
Father, and mankind are my brothers, and I can 
love and reverence. 

Mankind are my brothers, — they are brothers to 
one another. I would see them no longer mutual- 
ly estranged. I labor to bring them together, and 
to make them feel and own that they are all made of 
one blood. Let them feel and own this, and they will 
love one another : they will be kindly alTectioned one 
to another, and ^^ the groans of this nether world 
will cease;" the spectacle of wrongs and outrages 
oppress our sight no more ; tears be wiped from all 
eyes, and Humanity pass from death to life, to life 
immortal, to the life of God, for God is love. 

And this result, for which the wise and the good 
every where yearn and labor, will be obtained. I do 
not misread the age. I have not looked upon the 
world only out from the window of my closet : I 
have mingled in its busy scenes ; I have rejoiced and 



PROGRESS. 115 

wept with it ; I have hoped and feared, and believed 
and doubted with it, and I am but what it has made 
me. I cannot misread it. It craves union. The 
heart of man is crying out for the heart of man. 
One and the same spirit is abroad, uttering the 
same voice in all languages. From all parts of the 
world voice answers to voice, and man responds to 
man. There is a universal language already in 
use. Men are beginning to understand one anoth- 
er, and their mutual understanding will beget mu- 
tual sympathy, and mutual sympathy will bind them 
together and to God. 

And for progress too the whole world is strug- 
gling. Old institutions are examined, old opinions 
criticised, even the old Church is laid bare to its 
very foundations, and its holy vestments and sacred 
symbols are exposed to the gaze of the multitude; 
new systems are proclaimed, new institutions elab- 
orated, new ideas are sent abroad, new experiments 
are made^ and the whole world seems intent on the 
means by which it may accomplish its destiny. 
The individual is struggling to become a greater 
and a better being. Every where there are men 
laboring to perfect governments and laws. The 
poor man is admitted to be human, and millions of 
voices are demanding that he be treated as a broth- 



116 PROGRESS. 

er. All eyes and hearts are turned to education. 
The cultivation of the child's moral and spiritual 
nature becomes the worship of God. The priest 
rises to the educator, and the school-room is the 
temple in which he is to minister. There is pro- 
gress ; there will be progress. Humanity must go 
forward. Encouraging is the future. He, who 
tak^s his position on the ^^ high table land " of Hu- 
manity, and beholds with a prophet's gaze his 
brothers, so long separated, coming together, and 
arm in arm marching onward and upward towards 
the Perfect, towards God, may hear celestial voices 
chanting a sweeter strain than that which an- 
nounced to Judea's shepherds the birth of the 
Redeemer, and his heart full and overflowing, he 
may exclaim with old Simeon, [' Lord, now lettest 
thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes 
have seen thy salvation." 



THE END. 



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